How to take portraits indoors is better?

For every photographer, indoor shooting is both beneficial and challenging. In order to create excellent indoor portrait photography, you need to consider some factors, including lighting, specific equipment and available space. In order to help you establish and improve indoor portrait photography, here are 7 photography suggestions.

1. Select the appropriate depth of field and settings.

For indoor portrait photography, you will need to concentrate on using equipment that can compress the background with small depth of field.

In some cases, when taking photos in the artist's personal studio, the portrait will need more depth of field to include the background elements of your location.

However, in standard indoor shooting, such as photos taken for families, couples and children, you need to create clear and clean portraits and provide you with visually striking blurred and scattered backgrounds. In order to do this, we should consider lenses that will not produce little or no distortion.

For example, using a fixed-focus lens (such as a 35 mm, 50 mm or 85 mm fixed-focus lens) will be the best choice for taking portraits.

You should decide the length to use according to the type of image you want to create. The longer the focal length, the more subjects will be photographed-therefore, consider using 35mm for full-length shooting and 85mm for close-up and personal portrait shooting.

As for the setting, you will mainly focus on the shutter speed, because the shutter speed will determine the amount of light you enter the sensor.

According to the position of the subject, the choice of shutter speed will be decided. For example, a room with plenty of light needs a higher shutter speed, while a room with little light needs a lower shutter speed.

By using aperture, shutter speed and ISO principle, we can determine how to correctly expose indoor portraits. In these cases, the best rule of thumb is to fully open the aperture, reduce the shutter speed, and set the ISO to no more than 400 to avoid graininess.

Again, each situation and location is different, so make sure to adjust the lighting throughout the process.

Shooting in an organized space

Another factor to create the best indoor portrait is the shooting space. Even if you create a miniature close-up portrait, you want to have almost no interference elements in the image background.

In order to ensure enough open space, please consider making some adjustments before shooting. This can be as simple as moving furniture, putting your theme on a chair and leaning against a blank wall, rearranging the table and eliminating any unnecessary confusion, which will create a chaotic or chaotic appearance.

If you want to shoot in other people's private houses, please be sure to ask before rearranging their space. Explain that in a simpler background, the image will become more intense, and remember to put the room back to its original state after shooting.

3. Windows that use natural light

Although shooting in indoor space, you can still use outdoor natural light to illuminate the subject.

A simple way to correctly illuminate and compose a picture is to move it closer to the window. Windows will provide a small amount of scattering for the direct light source passing through the glass, thus bringing soft and delicate light to your object.

When using windows to bring natural light, you need to move objects nearby, but keep a distance of several feet between them. This is because we want the subject's face to be illuminated, but it is not completely covered by light, resulting in overexposure.

When posing, ask your subject to turn the characters slightly to the window, let the light shine on their faces and illuminate their five senses. Using windows as light sources can make your composition naturally soft.

Eliminate artificial light source

Usually, when shooting portraits indoors, it is necessary to eliminate the artificial light sources that may exist in tungsten lamp or fluorescent lamps.

In order to eliminate artificial lighting on equipment, you should find and turn off all possible overhead lighting. In this way, the only lighting equipment in a room or space can be filled with natural light.

This technology will work when windows can be used as light sources, but in other cases, it may be difficult to turn off all forms of lighting. If you find that the only option is to keep artificial lighting, you need to adjust the white balance of the camera to get proper exposure and tone composition.

To adjust the white balance, you can use the gray card to set the tone range, and even use the custom settings in the camera body to change specific types of artificial lighting. Once the proper white balance is determined, it should be able to eliminate any unnecessary and distracting tones in the image.

5. Frame the theme with your background.

If it is a unique indoor portrait meeting, we should consider using the background to compose the theme and tell the story.

In some cases, indoor portraits will be dominated by portraits, with almost no background composition. On the other hand, however, indoor portrait meetings can be set in specific places to express ideas or tell stories.

For the latter example, using location to tell a story may be an effective way to create an image that connects the audience with your photos. In various cases, the background can be used to form the theme, for example:

Take pictures of musicians in their recording studios.

Capturing artists in the studio

Create stories of interior designers in personal offices.

Re-imagine the portraits of family members or couples by creating private and unique images in their own homes.

In each case, you want to use the background to completely immerse yourself in the theme. You can do this by creating gestures, such as sitting in a chair, working at their desk, reading a book or even looking out of the window, and treating these images as traditional portraits rather than personal expressions.

Use a flash or a mirror

In order to form the best portrait, we should first consider how to create appropriate lighting. If you find that there is a lack of natural light, but the artificial light source is too dazzling-you may need to use a flash or a mirror in combination.

Flashlights and mirrors will help you reflect and control light in many ways. The flash can be used directly on the camera or on the trigger system outside the camera. If you want to use a flash, don't aim directly at your subject, because it will overexpose the flash. The purpose of this is to make the flash bounce back from the surrounding walls, thus dispersing its intensity.

In addition, reflectors can also be used to move and manipulate lighting in space. If you put the subject next to the window, please capture the natural light with a mirror and reflect it on the subject's face. This method enables you to illuminate them and eliminate any form of rough and distracting shadows.

You can also use a mirror to create a spotlight (shimmer or spark) in the subject's eyes.

7. consider using a tripod

In order to eliminate any form of camera shake or image blur, a tripod can be used.

A tripod can be used in any situation to keep your camera level and stable, but it is really necessary when you shoot in low light. Using a tripod in low illumination helps to keep the equipment balanced and slow down the shutter speed to increase the light.

If you can't create a few blurred images due to lack of space, you definitely need to consider using a tripod.