Skills of quick introduction to portrait photography

At the beginning of shooting, beginners often feel at a loss: how to set up a camera when shooting portraits? What kind of shooting angle and how to compose the picture? What kind of posture does the character want to be the most beautiful? What kind of light is most effective? The seemingly complicated shooting process, in fact, master some of the most commonly used shooting techniques, you can quickly get started with portrait photography. After skillfully using these skills, develop your photography creation means and shoot your wonderful portrait photography!

Take close-ups of portraits with medium and long focal lengths.

The biggest feature of using medium and long focal length lens to shoot close-ups of people is that it can fill the picture and occupy a larger proportion, thus playing a role in highlighting the main body of people. Usually, when shooting portraits with digital SLR cameras in Quan Huafu, it is more appropriate to use 85mm and 105mm lens focal length according to different scenes of chest circumference and head and shoulder portraits. In this way, you can shoot wonderful works at a proper distance.

The lens focal length of 85mm or 90mm is usually called "portrait lens", which shows that it is the most suitable focal length segment for shooting portraits. Outdoor, the most suitable for shooting busts. The author takes figures above the waist, mainly highlighting the facial expression of the model, especially her charming eyes. At the same time, the medium-long focal length has a strong ability to blur the background, which is used with large aperture. Note that in the background of the work, the dark lines passing through the neck of the characters are vague and will not affect the picture effect. Novices can make up for their ability to control the messy background as long as they remember to shoot portraits with medium and long focal lengths, which is the most direct magic weapon to win.

Note that if you take a close-up portrait with a wide-angle lens, if you want to take a full-screen portrait, you have to be close to the portrait, which will deform the figure-the nose is elongated, the nose is enlarged, the chin is exaggerated, and the back of the head is reduced, which will make your model very dissatisfied, so if it is not necessary, you must avoid taking a close-up portrait with a wide-angle lens.

Tips:

When shooting a bust with a focal length of 90mm, it is usually appropriate to keep a shooting distance of 3 ~ 4 m from the figure. Let the leaves near the camera make a blurred foreground, which can make the picture feel deep and avoid monotony.

Take a portrait of the natural environment with a telephoto lens.

Novices often use wide-angle lenses to include characters and background scenes when shooting full-length portraits of characters, but their large depth-of-field effect often makes the characters and background very clear and causes mutual interference. Try to use a lens with a long focal length, such as 135mm or even 200mm, and blur the background with the change of reality, which can not only highlight the characters, but also blend in with the scene to a certain extent. Using aperture f/5.6 or f/8 is a suitable choice. The depth of field range of telephoto lens can not only ensure the overall clarity of the characters, but also blur the background appropriately.

When shooting with a long focal length lens, the viewing angle is only a small range. Changing the shooting position slightly can make the background single and tidy. Using a telephoto focal length of 200mm, the author visually formed the feeling that the characters were close to the rock wall, and the background was a single and dark cliff. When using this method to narrow the distance between the figure and the background, we must consider the brightness contrast between them-the contrast between the prominent white girl and the dark stone wall, in order to highlight the figure to the greatest extent.

A telephoto lens can also bring the subject closer to the background and foreground. Using these characteristics of long focal length lens, we can not only control the blur of foreground background, but also control their position and proportion in the work, so as to better play the role of setting off the main body. This shooting technique is not only used for artistic portrait creation, but also commonly used for street documentary portrait capture.

Tips:

Distance, so in portrait pose, more is to see the free play of the model. Avoid putting characters in the center of the picture when composing. Too many ground scenes, especially nearby sundries, will affect the characters, so the characters should be placed in the lower part of the picture. Focus needs to be particularly rigorous. It is best to use composition first, and then focus on the focus by covering the edges of the characters.

Blur the background with a large aperture

Large aperture can blur the background perfectly, make the original chaotic and complicated scenery blend with each other, become harmonious and beautiful, and cooperate with people with clear focus and clear outline, thus obtaining a creative effect with great visual impact.

When shooting close-ups of people's faces, using a large aperture can blur the scenery irrelevant to the theme as much as possible. For example, in this work, the blue pool water in the background, even the model's shoulder and neck hair and shoulder swimsuit. However, too large aperture will not only blur the background, but also affect the clarity of the model's nose tip (when the focus is on the eyes). Therefore, the author chooses the aperture f/5.6, and the clear depth of field covers the charming eyes and sexy pursed lips of the characters, from the bud of the ear to the shoulder. The expression of the characters is extremely prominent.

Many skill books recommend the use of large aperture when shooting outdoor portraits, but it is not necessary to blindly use the maximum aperture of the lens in actual operation, especially the lens with medium and long focal length, such as 85mm/f 1.2 or 70 ~ 200 mm/F2.8, for two reasons. First, the imaging quality of the maximum aperture (such as f/2.8) will be much lower than the optimal aperture (f/5.6) of this lens. Secondly, the depth of field of the maximum aperture will be very shallow, especially when shooting close-ups of head portraits, such as the focus of the eyes is very clear, and the nose tip or ears before and after are blurred.

Therefore, if you are taking a close-up, it is best to reduce the aperture of 1~2 on the basis of the maximum aperture, which can give consideration to the best imaging and the most beautiful blur.

Tips:

When taking close-up portraits, the focus must be on the eyes. If the eyes are in front of each other, the focus should be on the eyes in front. Some fixed-focus telephoto lenses have a maximum aperture of f/ 1.2 or f/ 1.4, and their depth of field is only a few millimeters before and after focusing. We must be careful when using the maximum aperture.

Ensure a clear focus

For a portrait work, the accuracy of focus selection and the clarity of focus are absolutely the key factors to determine success or failure. Even some photographers will directly eliminate out-of-focus works, no matter how good their light and shadow, demeanor and movements are.

When taking a portrait of a person's head and shoulders, the face occupies a large enough proportion in the picture. When choosing the focus, we must clearly focus on people's eyes, even if people's eyes are not in the center of the picture, or people don't need to open their eyes. After making sure that the eyes are in sharp focus, the aperture can be determined according to the blur effect. The author uses a lens focal length of 100mm, hoping that the face is clear and the long hair at the back of the head is blurred, so he uses an aperture of f/8. If you want the whole avatar to be clear, you can use f/ 1 1 or f/ 16. In this way, the relationship between focal length and depth of field can be effectively used to control the clear range of characters in the work.

Therefore, most photographers will take the shooting order of focusing first and then composing, because they emphasize the importance of clear focusing. When focusing on portrait photography, the order is generally selected according to the categories of head and shoulder images and full-body images, or according to the proportion of people in the picture, the focus is first on the eyes, and then on the head and body.

Tips:

When shooting portraits, if you want to accurately control the clarity of characters and the blurring of backgrounds, the best way is to control the distance between characters and backgrounds. The farther the character is from the background scene, the stronger the blur effect is. When patting the head and shoulders, it is best to use vertical framing to highlight the long and narrow face. When using banners to take pictures, you need the matching and trend of hats, scarves and other accessories.

Small, fresh and high-profile portraits, exposure is better than restoration.

The popular small fresh portrait is actually a new development of the traditional high-profile portrait. The so-called high-profile portrait photography has been derived from black and white photography for a long time. Medium gray tone usually works are images obtained by automatic exposure. In a comprehensive picture, there are three tones of black, white and gray, and the medium gray tone effect of 18% is obtained. Everything in the picture has a certain proportion of black and white, and the main color is medium gray, which is a common color when we observe the scenery every day. For high-profile works, by increasing the proportion of white (bright part), improving the brightness of medium gray, and restraining the proportion of black (dark part), the overall tone is re-formed. At this time, the overall gray value of the photo is less than the medium gray tone of 18%.

Shooting small and fresh high-profile portraits, the shooting environment and the dress of the characters are also particular. The author chose the early spring season, when the leaves just spit out light green, shallow and charming, and the flowers just bloom and are spotless; Characters' clothes are mainly white or light colors. With the bright spring scenery, it is full of fresh colors. When shooting, on the basis of automatic exposure, the first exposure is added, so that the main colors from the characters to the background in the picture are presented in light pink, and the small and fresh picture effect naturally floats on the paper.

It's complicated In terms of shooting skills, it can be achieved simply by adding a level of exposure value. Of course, in today's color and digital photography, high-profile portraits also need to consider the influence of color, such as hue, lightness and saturation of color, which makes high-profile portraits have made great progress.

When shooting a small, fresh and high-profile portrait, it is usually not difficult to get it as long as you pay attention to the following points: First, increase the exposure appropriately; Second, choose white or bright scenery as the background; Third, it is best to wear white or light-colored clothes.

Tips:

Taking fuzzy flowers as the foreground, the author adds gouache effect to the picture through blooming and diffusion, which is worth learning. Pay attention to keep a certain proportion of dark scenes in the picture, such as the black hair and dark torso of the characters, in order to increase the stability of the work. The high-light part of the road surface is easy to be overexposed, forming bright spots. In the early stage, you can use functions such as "Highlight Tone Priority" to keep it to the maximum extent.