Experience and skills of entry-level portrait shooting

Lead: Many children's shoes are bought with hoods at first, such as 18-55, 18- 135. These two avatars are zoom tourist avatars, which are not suitable for introductory portrait learning. But remember that doesn't mean it can't take pictures! Big aperture is not the whole of photography! If you can make good use of the gloves in your hand, you can also make a good film!

The following photo was taken in 550D+ 18-55, JPEG straight out, without any PS:

In terms of time, the best time for outdoor portrait shooting is from 4 pm to sunset. At this time, the angle and intensity of light will make the skin feel comfortable, and the background (Jiao Wai) will be better than other times.

Above, backlit, taken at 4: 37 pm.

Later, from the composition, light communication with models and other aspects. How to take a good portrait photo with your camera.

(1) Key Points of Backlighting

Ok, I'll start with backlighting. The so-called backlight means that the camera is opposite to the illumination direction, that is, the lens is basically facing the light source (the offset angle is also counted). Light sources are usually sunlight, lights and sometimes flashlights.

There are two problems to pay attention to when shooting backlight: one is easy to lose focus (as far as some entry machines and lenses are concerned), and the other is that the exposure effect changes frequently due to the rapid change of light.

When I use 550D+50 1.8, I often encounter problems in Jiao Wai, for example, the sun is tepid at 5 pm, but if the composition is like the picture below, the sun will still interfere with the focus (sometimes the spittoon will even pull the bellows back and forth). The solution is to move your position a little bit and put the sun in the picture? Hide? When you walk behind a person, you usually cover it with your head. At this time, the picture is not so bright, and there will not be too much light directly entering the lens to interfere with focusing. At this time, focus on your head, don't let go of the shutter, and then pan yourself (or the camera) to re-compose and take pictures.

Key points of reverse lighting

The second question is that when shooting a group of portraits with backlight, you can't like that every picture has the big sun in the same position, so you should always adjust the composition, including often throwing away the sun and shooting some details of the portrait (such as lowering your head and shooting horizontally with your hands). At this time, because the sun disappears from the picture, the light received by the camera will drop sharply, and our three exposure parameters need to be done.

This is related to whether we should shoot in AV mode or M mode. Now I list the advantages and disadvantages of the two when shooting in the backlight group. When we really shoot, we need to weigh the pros and cons and try to choose one to shoot.

AV mode: Aperture priority is to let the camera determine parameters (shutter speed) other than ISO and aperture value. The advantage of this is that after adjusting the exposure compensation you need at that time, if you move the picture and change the light intensity, the camera will immediately adjust the exposure parameters according to the current light intensity by metering, so that the brightness of the subject before and after the picture is similar, and the picture will not be underexposed after you drive the sun out of the picture. This is the advantage of AV!

The disadvantage of AV is also obvious, because the exposure value in this mode is often adjusted by the camera, so the exposure of several photos you take at similar angles may be different and uneven. For example, in the above picture, similar composition will make the central spot on the hand, or on the face, or in the background and sunlight. The light intensity in these places is different, which will easily cause the camera to be overexposed for a while and underexposed for a while. In short, my solution is to set the metering method to? Evaluation photometry? (usually use this) or? Central key average metering? In this way, if the whole photo is measured, the exposure data of each photo under similar composition will be closer.

M mode: Compared with the above AV mode, it is not difficult to find that the biggest advantage of M mode is that it can make photos with similar compositions have similar brightness when taking photos in backlight. As long as you adjust the three parameters, you don't have to worry about the sun being blocked in the picture and affecting the data. Simply put, your photos are basically the same brightness.

The shortcomings are also obvious. After you shoot the backlight, you suddenly want to look down and shoot a detail or something, and the picture is easily underexposed. The only solution is to change a parameter according to the photometric instructions on the camera after the composition changes (especially when the angle between the shooting direction and the sunlight changes greatly). If you are familiar with exposure, it will be faster and better to guess directly and then change the data.

Generally, I shoot backlight in M mode: the scene light ratio is too strong. For example, the background is a dense reed. With the change of your position and wind, the intensity of sunlight shining through the reed will change rapidly and greatly, so I will use M mode to give the parameters.

By the way, there is another situation that is also very suitable for M mode (non-backlight) shooting, that is, when the light on the scene is very weak and you want to accurately grasp the exposure. Take the following photo as an example. At that time, it seemed that the sun was going down, and the last ray of light shone on MM's face through the Woods, because the sunlight was too weak. If I let the camera decide the exposure result, I will easily lose control of this only light. Then I chose M mode, and then I tried to take a few pictures. The three exposure parameters were adjusted accurately, which would make me very satisfied.

After the light, let's talk about the color tone later.

(2) About hue

Tone is mainly achieved by white balance shift and photo style, so there is nothing to explain this skill, that is, what kind of atmosphere you like, you have to choose tone according to this atmosphere. As for what kind of atmosphere needs what kind of color to create, it depends on your ability to feel art? Well, actually, I still need to look at more photos on the Internet. Pay more attention to the colors of photos of various styles of Japanese forest department and European department, and then try it in your own shooting.

My experience is that I will use light yellow or dark yellow tones for warm or quiet pictures;

For pictures that are particularly quiet and tend to be forest-style, or pictures close to water (especially the seaside), light blue or dark blue tones should be used;

For indoor photos with still life, such as tea cups and music boxes, you can try blue+green tones;

For some emotional or pleasant pictures, consider the pink tone, that is, magenta+red, as shown below:

Consider the pink tone.

As for the saturation, don't adjust the shooting characters too high, and lower them is very suitable for shooting films with fresh style and Mori style; If you shoot a small scene in the summer sun, improving saturation will have a great effect! And you can also try to improve saturation while reducing sharpness and contrast, which has a unique effect! In short, what I said will never become your experience, and it is king to try it yourself!

(3) Selection of background

For Sao Nian, who has the control of blurring, the background is really too important! Don't think that it's useless now that the background is blurred. Although the background is blurred, it still firmly controls the color of the blurred part and the distribution and density of Jiao Wai spots. So you should pay attention to:

First, you want a beautiful background. You need to find a place with light in the background. Be careful not to direct light, but to reflect light, because only the light that shines on a large shrub leaf and then reflects back is balanced and everywhere. At the same time, the reflected light is preferably scattered point by point, also for the uniform distribution of background light spots.

Secondly, you should pay attention to the color of background objects. If it's the color you want, that's best. If you are shooting a small fresh bright red background, that's not good either.

Finally, you should know how to use the beauty of the background. Simply put, don't blindly think about shorting the background (many people think it looks professional). In fact, sometimes you can keep the details of the background, or just shoot the background as clear as the characters, which will be more emotional than all the empty pictures! This requires you to control your aperture and focal length, and sometimes try to narrow the aperture to make the background less miserable, and maybe the photos will be more eye-catching!

As shown in the figure below:

The aperture is too large, the foreground background is blurred, but the picture is not good.

The aperture of this picture is f5. If the aperture is too large, the foreground and background are blurred, but the picture is not good.

Here is a suggestion that beginners can easily ignore, that is, the best blur of a large aperture lens is of course the maximum aperture. I believe everyone likes the maximum aperture at first, such as 50 1.8 f 1.8. But maybe you can try it once. When taking portraits, take more stops, such as f2.8 or f4. When you upload the photos to the computer and savor them carefully, you will find that the photos taken after several stops are really much better! Especially the details of characters' faces.

(4) the movements and expressions of the characters

In general portrait photography, the essence of the movements and expressions that characters need is two words: nature!

You can set many actions and expressions, but it must be natural!

I won't say anything else, mainly because I'm worried that the characters don't have any movements, so I don't feel anything when I shoot.

(5) Angle

This is also an OK that needs constant efforts. Everyone has everyone's face, which is different. Of course, when you set the angle of the face, you should also take other things in the picture into account, such as the angle between the person and the sun, such as the new feeling of the picture that may be brought about by the change of the lens angle? In short, try to set it according to the model and scene environment.

Well, for example, I like to pat my girlfriend on the side.

(6) communication

Did my girlfriend and I have one? Cooperation? After more than a year, the tacit understanding is naturally high, but even so, sometimes I have to patiently explain to her the pictures I want to shoot, making it easier for her to pose and express herself in line with my imagination. And I have only cooperated with others a few times, and my experience is similar, that is, you should have full communication with your model, and you should tell them your picture idea (even if she doesn't understand it) so that they can have a good idea. Except snapshots, of course.

Let's post a partial portrait photo to explain it a little:

First of all, many people are curious about how this green background came from. In fact, it is just a roadside shrub (mostly camellia) in the park. The surface of the leaves is waxy, nearly oval, and the orientation of each piece is irregular, so the sun shines from the front to the top, and those leaves reflect bits and pieces of light. They are completely blurred, and this is what the picture looks like. Maybe someone saw the rainbow. I don't know about that. This is a windfall.

So, this photo is a snapshot, not a pose. I saw this background at that time, and then I pulled her over and took a picture of her, and I took a few silly expressions, feeling that I couldn't find my feelings. Then I began to adjust the settings, raise the saturation a little, and adjust the exposure compensation according to the photos I just took. The aperture is f2 and the ISO is 200. At this time, she was bored, so she took out her lip balm and planned to apply it. I said you should apply it. You turned it a little bit, then went up and adjusted the orientation, so that her face and the sunlight formed an angle of about 120 degrees, and quickly checked whether the camera was in continuous shooting. (Note that this is very important! Please choose the camera's continuous shooting mode to shoot portraits, especially to capture portraits! Even if your continuous shooting is slow, it is a hundred times better than single shooting. ) Then, while drawing me, she squatted down slightly and took a few pictures, and then stopped after drawing. The whole painting process takes about 10 second.