Portrait photography skills: shoulders

Portrait photography skills: shoulders

In close-up portraits, the shoulder is often the most important part that photographers tend to overlook-many people will notice that the eyes appear in the trisection, but forget to deal with the composition of the shoulder in the photo.

Why are shoulders important?

First of all, the shoulder is the widest part of your subject, which can directly affect the visual line "direction" of the picture. Secondly, the proper shoulder angle can balance the overall composition of the picture, especially when the face of the person is inclined.

There are two main shooting methods for close-up portrait shoulders:

1. "Tilt"

There are actually two kinds of tilt, one is that the shoulders are "different in height" (upper right), and the other is that the shoulders are "different in front and back" (lower left) to form a visual tilt effect. You can notice that the sloping shoulders obviously improve the balance of the photo and make the posture of the characters look very natural.

2. "shoulders. Frame "

Try not to take all the heads of the characters when taking pictures. Using the natural trapezoidal frame composed of eyebrows and shoulders (the next two pictures) can get a more natural portrait, highlighting the most important portrait element-eyes (as shown in the bottom right);