Outdoor portrait shooting skills

What are the outdoor portrait photography skills? Outdoor shooting is one of the places that many photographers choose. I sorted out the outdoor shooting skills for you. Welcome to read the reference!

Outdoor shooting skills

1, choose your own key points

When you choose the autofocus option of the camera and let the camera help you choose the focus, your shooting is on a road of lack of opinion. The autofocus function of a camera is usually designed to focus automatically on the object closest to the lens. Like my 1DS Mark III, it will automatically select the group as the focus, and then calculate an average distance among all the selected focuses as? Best focus? That was a complete joke. So choose the right focus when taking pictures, because you are the ultimate decider of your photos.

2. Always focus on your eyes.

The eyes are the windows of the soul, and you will find that the eyes are an element that can not be ignored in any good portrait photo. Of course, the decisive factor that constitutes an excellent portrait is not only the eyes, but also the strong feelings conveyed by the eyes. So when you are shooting, you should make the subject's eyes the clearest point in the photo. And when you focus the model's eyes with a large aperture, the lens will blur the background and make people's skin look softer and smoother.

3. Use a large aperture to obtain a shallow depth of field.

There are many reasons to buy a large aperture lens. The most important reason is that it can help us get a shallow depth of field when shooting. You can use F2, 8 or F4 large aperture lens to get soft natural light for portrait shooting, which can naturally blur the background.

4. Try not to shoot portraits with a focal length less than 50mm, and use a focal length of 70mm or longer.

You may always hear it from the subject? Why does my face look so big? You know, any focal length below 70mm will cause the distortion of the subject more or less, although it will not be obvious before 50 mm, so it is best not to shoot portraits with a focal length less than 50 mm. The compression effect of telephoto lens can increase the blur of the background, so most of my portraits are shot with a focal length of 120mm to 200 mm.

Step 5 shoot in RAW format

I've said this sentence more than a thousand times, and I'm sure I'll say it again ten thousand times. RAW format is an unmodified data compilation recorded by camera sensor during exposure, which is the original digital source of photos. When you shoot in JPEG format, it looks no different from that in RAW format, but when you edit the image, you will find that the image shot in JPEG format is missing a lot of data, and the image in RAW format allows us to edit the photo to a greater extent.

You can recall that when the white balance of the camera is set incorrectly, you have to spend a lot of energy and time adjusting it to eliminate the color cast. At this time, if you shot in RAW format before, you can easily save the photo because it allows you to restore the original color of the image.

6. Take a gray card with you to adjust the white balance.

When you open Adobe Camera Raw or other Raw image editing software, there is always an option for you to choose a custom white balance in the application. It is usually a dropper-style icon. You can adjust the white balance of the image by clicking the neutral gray that you think is correct.

Imagine that you took nearly 800 photos in four scenes at a time, but those photos were all taken with the automatic white balance set by the camera for you. 800 photos have 800 different white balance values, which is a nightmare in the later period.

If you can set the white balance of a gray card in each scene according to your shooting theme during the first shooting, you will save a lot of later time. As long as you open your most satisfactory photo in the later software, and then use the dropper to select the white balance, you can adjust the white balance of the remaining photos synchronously, thus saving a lot of precious time. If you plan to make better use of time, the smartest thing to do is to set the white balance every 30 minutes, or set the white balance with the change of light when shooting. )

7. Avoid direct sunlight

Direct light is dazzling, which can easily cause your subject to squint and produce a thick shadow on his face. If you don't shoot in direct light, you can avoid shadows. I have always believed that only soft light can describe people's natural features, and proper exposure and correct white balance can make your photos more eye-catching.

8. Be more careful when shooting on cloudy days

Clouds are nature's soft boxes. Clouds with the right thickness can enrich the color of your photos and reflect unexpected light.

9. Use reflected light

Learn to control the direction of light and try to simulate the lighting effect of photography studio by using reflected light. It is not a good idea to point the subject directly at the sun unless you want to get a clean outline. An effective way is to wait for the clouds to move to cover the sun, which can often produce a very obvious contrast effect between light and shade.

10, using existing reflected light.

For example, you can use a nearby white car as a ready-made reflector when shooting, as long as it is not painted with a layer of gray. You can change the tone of the photo white balance. )

1 1, understand the criteria of F 16.

You must have a correct exposure benchmark in your mind, especially when there is a lack of metering tools at the shooting scene. The standard of F 16 is that when the aperture value of your camera is adjusted to F 16 in the case of sunlight shooting, the shutter speed will be the reciprocal of the current ISO sensitivity. For example, if your camera ISO is set to 100 and the aperture is set to F 16, the shutter speed should be one hundredth of a second.

In cloudy conditions (or when shooting in shadows), you only need to use the F8 aperture. Of course, it is best if you have an exposure meter or a gray card to accurately measure the exposure. (Note: The process of measuring exposure with a gray card is different from setting a custom white balance. )

12. Bring a sheet and some clips from home.

Are there any old silk sheets in your storage room? Go find it. Of course, you can also choose to buy the cheapest white sheets. An extra-large sheet can make a magical and cheap soft light cover. The way the sheet becomes a sun cover: wrap the edge of the sheet and clip it on a branch or rope to filter the direct sunlight, especially the light from directly above the subject. Note that the bottom of the sheet is tied with stones with ropes to prevent the sheet from being blown into your shooting picture by the wind. )

13, don't let irrelevant scenery enter the picture.

We said that we should focus the camera on people's eyes and let your attention focus on the overall idea of the photo. Wires, billboards, weeds, rubbish, and sometimes even trees will disturb people's attention to the focus of photos, so make sure the photos are clean and tidy. Finally, enjoy the whole shooting process, and your feelings of indulging in shooting will eventually show up in the photos.

PS: Some tips for shooting in rainy days.

Clouds are wonderful. As we said before, they are like a huge blanket, which can disperse the direct light of the sun and make our photos more colorful and tense. Similarly, the cloud can deceive you in ways you can't imagine, and let you shoot with the white balance you think is correct all day.

When you shoot on cloudy days, it is particularly important to customize the white balance. Every photo has a completely different color, and each color depends on two factors.

First of all, at different time periods, as most people know, the white balance changes with the time of day.

Second, you must consider what the unknown reflects before the light hits the subject. Different reflected light can form different colors.

Besides, pollution changes the color of sunlight every minute. Even if it is invisible to the naked eye, the camera can sensitively capture this change. On cloudy days, pollution particles and tiny water droplets are suspended in mid-air. The prism formed by sunlight passing through water droplets will reflect light from many directions to the polluted particles, which is also the reason why the light is complicated in rainy weather.

You know, light is everywhere, it is just spread, softened and dispersed. On cloudy days, the sun is still directional, and things are still backlit. Find out the direction of the sun with a compass, and then press the shutter with your back to the sun!

I hope that after reading this article, you will never imagine alone after reading a photo, why it is still overexposed when it is cloudy, or why the sky is so beautiful but the portrait looks too dark.