Outdoor portrait shooting skills?

Outdoor portrait is one of the simplest and most difficult topics in photography. Because a good portrait photo should not only show the personal temperament ch

Outdoor portrait is one of the simplest and most difficult topics in photography. Because a good portrait photo should not only show the personal temperament characteristics of the subject, but also show the photographer's own creativity and ability to grasp the surrounding environment. Although there is no certain standard for outdoor portrait shooting in a broad sense, there are certain rules to be found in general outdoor portrait shooting. Here I sort out the common methods and skills in portrait shooting, hoping to bring some help to everyone's shooting.

Steps/methods

An indispensable reflector

Portrait shooting doesn't require much equipment. Although a lens with a large aperture can create a more perfect depth of field, it doesn't mean that a digital camera with a large aperture and a long focus can't shoot good outdoor portraits. Composition and lighting are the essentials of portrait shooting. Besides, there are many other ways to highlight the theme, so you don't have to care too much about the inefficiency of your digital camera. As long as it is used properly, any camera can produce good works.

Reflecting plate is one of the most commonly used tools in outdoor portrait shooting, which can supplement the light for the main characters in the backlight, eliminate the shadow on the face and increase the eye light. Therefore, in outdoor portrait shooting, reflector is essential.

Best shooting time and place

In addition to preparing the equipment, it is also important to choose the time for outdoor portrait shooting. At present, 6:00-9:00 am in summer is the best time to shoot, because the sunshine at this time is soft and moderate, and the portraits taken will not have strong shadows, and there is no lack of three-dimensional sense in the sun. Sunset is also one of the best times for portrait shooting. However, due to the high temperature of nearly 40 degrees, it is generally difficult for models to play normally, so the early morning is an outdoor photo shoot in summer.

For the choice of location, try to choose a simple and sparsely populated place. Parks and green spaces are one of the simplest choices. Open-air bars with rich cultural atmosphere and western-style modern architectural scenes are also good choices. If you like a wide field of vision, then suburban green space is the most suitable.

Shooting angle and composition

In portrait shooting, we usually use the head-up shooting angle, that is, the camera is in a horizontal line with the photographer's eyes. Too high or too low a shooting angle can easily lead to deformation of the model's face. In addition to head-up, a common shooting angle is looking up, that is, shooting from bottom to top. Looking up generally uses a wide angle, and close-up shooting can achieve some dramatic exaggeration. Users of digital cameras with wide-angle lenses below 28 mm can try to shoot, and shooting at this angle may get some unexpected effects.

When shooting a composition, we should pay attention to the collocation of the main portrait and the surrounding environment, and the main character should occupy at least one-fifth of the whole photo, because if the proportion of characters in the portrait photo we take is too small, the scenery in the whole photo will become a kind of interference, and novices should pay special attention.

Outdoor portrait fill light

Don't think that you only need to use a flash when the light is dark. Sometimes you must use a flash to fill the light when the light is sufficient. In one case, there is a great contrast between the subject and the background when shooting against the light. If the subject is exposed, the background will inevitably be overexposed, the background will return to normal, and the subject will be underexposed. At this time, you need to fill the light with a flash.

As shown below, the shooting environment is 4: 30 in the afternoon. Although the ambient light darkens with the setting sun, the light is still bright due to the influence of backlight. This man is backlit, and his face is very black. When taking this photo, measure the environment first. The measured data is the aperture F3.5 and the shutter is 1/250. After the measurement is completed, set the camera to M, set the aperture shutter, turn on the flash, TTL mode, and reduce the output by 1.5. Finally, the finished product drawing shows that people's faces are exposed normally and the environmental atmosphere is also obtained.

Backlight draws a circle of warm lines around girls' hair and sweaters, which is isolated from the background and highlights the main body of the characters. The front flash fills the light. When shooting a composition, pay attention to covering a part of the main body of the sun with the subject to avoid glare.

So where should the portrait be placed in the photo? As we all know, portrait works can generally be divided into full-length, half-length and close-up. The most common composition is to put people in the middle of the photo, but now the most popular position of people is in the golden grid of the whole photo, which will make the photo more natural.

It is worth noting that people should lean toward the center of the photo, and leaning outward will give people an awkward feeling of external characters. Of course, if you deliberately want to show a certain style is a special case, you can shoot according to your own preferences. In short, the conventional golden frame composition has been recognized by most people, with a good sense of space and visual effects.

For portrait photos, the choice of focal length can usually be divided into several common modes, such as full body, bust and close-up of face. Generally, these modes can be combined with the composition mentioned above to take an ideal portrait photo. However, one thing worthy of beginners' attention is the choice of focal length.

A reasonable focal length can reflect a stronger sense of space and three-dimensionality, while the wrong use of focal length may make your beautiful model's face flat or lack the layering of photos. When shooting full-length and bust, you can't blindly pursue the beauty of blurred background, and directly pull the optical zoom of 10 times in your hand to the end. Although this can give you a certain small depth of field, the negative effect is narrow, which is the feeling of spatial vision. This is because when shooting with telephoto, the angle of light entering the lens is very small, and only a small piece of scenery behind people can be photographed. Therefore, the standard focal length of about 50 mm should be selected for full-body photography, and the telephoto of 135 to 200 mm or more should be used for close-up of bust and area.

Common zoom lenses of 50mm, 85mm and 70-200 are commonly used portrait lenses, and different lenses have their own characteristics in horizontal and vertical composition. But for ordinary photographers, vertical composition is more suitable for portrait shooting, because vertical composition can make people occupy a larger area and better show the facial details of the model. Oblique composition and diagonal composition are also one of the common portrait compositions, which can highlight the movement more than before.

Which lighting method is better when shooting outdoor portraits? Generally speaking, don't let the model's face face the direct sunlight. Strong sunlight will make models bow their heads and squint, which will not show the charm of portrait photos. We can choose to shoot in the shadow, and the diffuse light in the sunny shadow is enough to provide the color we need. But we should pay attention to avoid hiding in the sun under the big tree as much as possible, because when the sun shines directly on the model's face through the leaves, it will produce ugly spots and bright spots.

Although the shadow area is a good choice, the portraits in the sun are still very stylish. When shooting in the sun, the first thing we should do is to avoid the model's face facing the sun directly, not to mention the side facing the sun, because this will form an ugly face of yin and yang, so we usually let the model turn his back to the sun in the sun, which is what we usually call backlight shooting.

When shooting with your back to the sun, it is easy to cause underexposure of your face, and because the background brightness is too high, normal average photometry will also lead to underexposure of your face. We can use exposure compensation or spot metering to increase the exposure and make the face brighter, but when using this method, the brightness of the whole photo may become higher, and the background will also become brighter, resulting in the background sky turning white or other details being lost.

At this time, it is necessary to fill the face. The simplest way is to put the reflector near the face and let the reflected soft light shine on the face, which can increase the light on the face and create an angry eye.

If the reflector still can't make up for the strong light contrast between the protagonist and the background, we can try to move the reflector closer, use two reflectors or use the flash of the camera to overlap and fill the light. The reflector is usually platinum. In the sun, we usually use the white side of the reflector to get soft light. If it is cloudy, it is best to choose the golden side, because it can increase the three-dimensional sense.