Skills of shooting night portraits

Lead: Taking a portrait is like baking an attractive cake yourself. We need to mix all the necessary ingredients together, then shape and add personal flavor. Once the cake is moved into the oven, we can't go back, and everything else can only be resigned to fate. The complex emotions of anxiety and expectation usually appear at the moment when we press the shutter.

Skills of Shooting Night Portraits Generally speaking, no matter whether shooting outdoors or in the studio, a portrait photography work will generally consist of three parts: the figure, the background and the main light source. Through the organic combination of the three, the face and soul of the character can break away from the shackles of the picture and pass it on to the viewer. Among them, people, background and light are the core components needed for baking cakes, and the composition has become a mold. Let's learn how to bake a delicious portrait cake.

Cities, especially after sunset, never lack elements that can stimulate portrait photography. Every time the lights come on, we can take our favorite models through the streets of the city to find the composition, background and light needed for creation. The key to success often depends on whether you have a pair of eyes that are good at discovering beauty. Try to find the shooting elements in the city through the portrait lens and try to make more use of the light created by the existing light sources in the environment. Of course, if the actual conditions are not good, we can also use off-plane flash and white soft umbrella to complete our shooting.

A bright shop in a dark corner

When shooting the following portraits, I hope to emphasize the dynamic contrast of the pictures. This contrast between light and dark can firmly attract the viewer's attention to the face and eyes in the bright part of the picture, and make the characters in the picture communicate with the viewer emotionally. The light source of the whole photo mainly comes from two parts, the first is the soft cold light on the left side of the picture, and the second is the red circular spot on the background of Jiao Wai. This light spot forms a hidden triangle composition with the characters' lips and eyes.

As shown in the picture below, we didn't use any soft boxes when shooting this portrait, but used the light from a actually messy pharmacy. The fluorescent lamp in the drugstore provides us with a smooth and soft light source, while the red dot in the background comes from the traffic lights.

Hotel mystery

In the second photo, we choose to take a photo outside a classical hotel and add some characters to the photo, in which the background acts as a part of the story and helps the photo present a mysterious atmosphere. The main light source of this work comes from type 90? The position of the' off-plane flash' was shot from the gap of the metal railing. This way of shooting helps to present a sense of depth of field, and it can also blur the streets, pedestrians and buildings in the background.

The lighting is shown in the figure below. The flash is placed 4 feet away from the right front of the model, and the output intensity of the flash is manually set to 1/32. The light intensity at this time can be well matched with the light in the background.

Layered shop

Layer is a common term for post-editing of images, but in the actual environment? Layer? It can be said that it is everywhere, especially in a city. Usually, shops located in the corner will have floor-to-ceiling windows on both sides, which gives us the opportunity to use complex composition, rather than using multiple photos with simple composition. Layer? The eyes of the audience can explore in the picture. However, when using this composition, remember to ensure that the audience's line of sight can finally stay on the subject and take the characters as the core, so that it can be called a portrait photography. Through two glass windows with different angles, the picture is divided into three main parts, and the characters are located in the right third of the picture.

Similar to before, the main light source of this photo comes from the off-board flash. As you can see in the picture below, the photo was taken through the window on the left side of the store.

Shooting equipment

Generally speaking, any camera can only take the above portrait photos with excellent portrait lens and manual exposure control, and the final decision depends on the head behind the lens. For Quan Huafu fuselage, the classic portrait lens is usually between 85mm and 105mm, and the rest of the fuselage needs to choose the appropriate lens according to the equivalent focal length. The advantage of using these lenses is that they can minimize distortion and form an ideal shooting distance. In addition, portrait fixed-focus lenses often adopt a large aperture design, and an aperture larger than f/2 can allow more light to enter the sensor, which is very suitable for urban night lighting conditions and provides a shallow depth of field effect.