The shooting essentials of portrait recognition photography

Portrait photography is one of the most important fields in photography, and it is also one of the photography fields that can best reflect the artistic realm of photographers. In my humble opinion, the artistic realm of portrait photography can be summarized into four levels: pleasing to the eye, lifelike, publicizing personality and interpreting life.

First, it is pleasing to the eye.

Pleasing to the eye is the basic requirement of ordinary people and photographers for portrait photography. Whether it is business portraits, family photos, news portraits or even portraits involved in any photography field, whether it is the subject, photographer or viewer, as long as there is no special purpose, they all want to see pleasing portraits, and making the audience and the audience physically and mentally happy is one of the most important goals of any art form.

First of all, pleasing to the eye has become the common goal of commercial photographers and customers. With the development of modern photography, many problems that were difficult or impossible to be solved by previous photographers have been solved technically, so it is relatively easy to achieve a pleasing realm. Used for commercial photography. This kind of portrait photography not only needs the photographer's own quality, but also depends on some objective factors, such as: excellent makeup artist, beautiful clothes, exquisite props, high-grade photographic equipment, advanced lighting, advanced equipment studio, advanced photo post-processing system, exquisite mounting and careful editing planning.

For the field of portrait photography, the biggest defects are the excessive involvement of non-photographic ontology language and the desalination of photographic ontology language. The so-called photographic ontology language is a unique expression of photographic technology and art, including the use of film, exposure control, photographic lighting and composition management. Non-photographic language mainly refers to non-photographic means of expression that originally played an auxiliary role in photography, such as makeup, costumes, props and so on.

In these portrait photography, the photographic ontology language is generally diluted, and most of the few remaining photographic ontology languages have become a fixed pattern and routine, and even distorted. For example, in terms of light consumption, in order to cater to the tastes of the public, more positive light and soft light are used; In terms of exposure, overexposure is often used to make the skin appear whiter.

But all this is for the customer, and there is nothing wrong with it. Pleasure is to make customers and the general public feel physically and mentally happy. Therefore, this portrait photography itself is an important part of photography art, and it is this pleasing photography that attracts thousands of people to the studio and becomes an important economic pillar for the development of photography art in China, especially amateur photography art.

Since photographic works have the ability to attract the public, it shows that photographic works have the ability to guide the public's aesthetic tendency. This pleasing commercial portrait photography has been popular for ten years, and the aesthetic tendency of the public is also changing quietly.

Moreover, in recent years, with the outstanding contribution of a group of young photographers with great artistic expression to commercial photography, the current portrait photography is showing a booming trend.

Second, realistic.

The appearance of photography makes the problem of "likeness" of portrait reproduction easy, and the development of contemporary portrait photography seems to be out of this development direction. In particular, the current popular business portraits are less and less like themselves, and are farther away from the vivid. The vividness here is, of course, not just a simple "likeness", but a similarity in spirit and form on the basis of pleasing to the eye.

Portrait photography in this field generally has the following main characteristics:

1: Use photography ontology language and non-photography ontology language correctly.

The use of photography ontology language is not simply based on whether it is pleasing to the eye, but mainly depends on whether it can express the expression characteristics of the characters, the lighting is natural and elegant, the exposure is accurate, and the skin color and texture are normal. Cosmetic props should not be too ostentatious and grandstanding. The purpose of makeup is to hide something from time to time, not to set it off. Props are just decorations, not expressions.

2. Exquisite expression capture and eye shaping.

The capture of expression is the eternal theme of photographers, and it is also the key to whether a portrait photography can be vivid. In the feminine contemporary portrait photography, it should be said that it is very good at this point.

There is a lack in the shaping of eyes. This is mainly due to the dim light used in photography. The high profile created by the soft light on the front makes it difficult to highlight the eyes. Therefore, using light to express the characters' eyes is the key to achieve this state in portrait works.

Third, flying personality.

Personality publicity in portrait photography can be divided into two aspects, one is to publicize the personality of the subject, and the other is to publicize the personality of the photographer.

From the photographer's point of view, the purpose of taking portraits is nothing more than to remember, appreciate and show their personality charm. From this perspective, the photographer is helping the subject to show his personality charm. From the photographer's point of view, as the creator of works of art, he should express his photography creativity by means of photography and with the help of the performance ability of models, to reflect his photography style, and even to tell his true understanding of life through photography language.

Portrait photography in this field usually has the following characteristics:

1: the unique language of photography ontology

In the use of photographic language, the use of photographic language in the first realm of portrait photography is generally dull, the use of photographic language in the second realm tends to be natural, and the use of photographic language in the third realm focuses on highlighting.

Light is the most unique ontological language of photography.

For example, Mo Xie's "Two Feelings to the Shadow" skillfully uses shadows to create a wonderful illusion, which is unforgettable. Another example is Zhu Enguang's Saint, Colin Thomas's A Light, Saab's Alexandra Sutton's Pure, and so on. The beauty of photography noumenon language is vividly reflected.

2. Unique and concise drama plot

For example, in the Shadow of Life filmed by Adler Mousavi, the hero and heroine in the picture tell an intriguing story in the light and shadow effect painstakingly managed by the photographer. It's not a TV series, but it seems to be better than electricity.