Christina Dickson is a portrait photographer and instructor for the Institute in Photographic Studies. Her work can be viewed at Christina Nichole Photogrpahy
As we discussed previously in Portrait Photography Power Posing Part I, posing is no simple matter. It requires great attention to detail in subject’s personality and artistic use of body language. A pose will speak for itself, but remember, facial expression also will give character to the pose.
The following are examples of basic poses that will work for a large variety of masculine personalities and body types and between both sexes.
Pose I - Standing Tall: Give an air of confident ability and self-assurance.
a. Shoulders Square
b. Feet shoulder width apart
c. Thumbs in pocket or on hip
d. Head slightly tipped back
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Do you want to improve your portrait photography?
Today I spent time digging through the Digital Photography School archives (there are now over 600 tutorials and articles) and noticed that we’ve covered the topic of Portrait Photography from a large variety of angles. I thought it would be useful to list some of the more popular portrait photography tips all in the one place.
I’ve chosen 19 of our most popular portrait photography articles and have assembled them below.
So if you’re interested in improving your portrait photography - grab a cup of coffee, set aside a little time and enjoy. If you enjoy these make sure you subscribe to get more via email or RSS.
How to Take Portraits - 19 Portrait Photography Tutorials from Our Archives
1. 10 Tips to Take Stunning Portraits
This recent post (one of the most popular that we’ve ever published on DPS) gives 10 fairly general tips on how to take portraits with the ‘wow factor’.
It’s all about adding variety to your portraits by doing things like altering your perspective, adding a prop, experimenting with eye contact and getting your subject out of their comfort zone (to name just a few).
It picks up ideas found in many of the following tutorials and would make a great place to start if you’re looking for an introduction to the topic.
2. 10 More Tips for Stunning Portrait Photography
In this followup to the last tutorial we extend the idea of adding variety to your shots.
It explores framing, wide angle lenses, backgrounds and experimenting with focusing.
All in all this post takes this mini series to 20 portrait photography techniques that have been read by hundreds of thousands.
I’d love to hear any thoughts you’d have on other techniques that you use to add variety to portraits in the comments on this post.
3. Give Your Subject Space to Look Into
This technique is basic but can have a real impact upon your shots.
Framing your portraits so that your subject has room to look into gives a shot balance and helps draw the eye of those viewing the image into the image.
Try it for yourself - but don’t forget, sometimes ‘rules’ like this one can be broken with great effect also - so experiment with that too!
4. 4 Quick Tips for Portraits
I Love picking the brains of professional photographers and this is what I did in this post in which a portrait photographer shared with me four parts of his shooting workflow.
The tips are simple yet effective - I particularly like the way that he shoots from slightly under the eye line of your subject - a technique that causes a little interesting debate in the comments of this post.
Drop by and tell us what you think!
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image by kkelly2007 Last week in my post 10 Ways to Take Stunning Portraits I talked about ‘Playing with Eye contact’ (point #2) as being one technique to
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This post is written by a portrait photographer from Portland Oregon. Christina Nichole is an instructor with The Institute in Photographic Studies. Her work can be found at ChristinaNicholePhotography.com.
On location portrait photographers find summer the perfect season to book their portrait schedule. It’s beautiful outside and many people want to take advantage of the weather for their pictures.
Regardless of season however one thing remains the same. Your job as a portrait photographer is simple: Make your subject look fantastic.
Critical components of dynamic portrait photography include indoor or outdoor lighting, creative locations, stellar composition, capturing your subjects personality and, last but certainly not the least: Posing.
Posing is nothing more than “body language”. Pointed fingers. Sagged shoulders. Head down. Each of these “say something’ about the person to you. Essentially, posing is simply learning how to demonstrate and guide your subject’s personality through their body language.
Think about it: A confident person will not sit with hunched over shoulders and head down. Most likely, they will stand tall and excited about life. Someone who is quiet probably will not be the quickest to dance in the middle of the street, but someone who is extremely expressive? Bring on the music!
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Yesterday I shared 10 Ways to take Stunning Portrait Photography. We covered everything from altering your perspective as a photographer, to experimenting with lighting, to shooting candidly.
Today I want to continue on the same train of thought with 10 more tips for adding a little spice to your portraits.
11. Frame Your Subject
Framing is a technique where by you draw attention to one element of an image by framing it with another element of the image.
Framing gives an image depth and draws the eye to a point of interest in the image.
You could do it by placing your subject in a window or doorway, have them look through a small gap or even use their hands around their face. See more examples of framing in photography here.
Image by darkmatter
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How do you take Portraits that have the ‘Wow’ factor?
Today and tomorrow I want to talk about taking Portraits that are a little out of the box. You see it’s all very well and good to have a portrait that follows all the rules - but it hit me as I was surfing on Flickr today that often the most striking portraits are those that break all the rules.
I want to look at some ways to break out of the mold and take striking portraits by breaking (or at least bending) the rules and adding a little randomness into your portrait photography. I’ll share ten of these tips today and a further ten tomorrow (update: you can see the 2nd part here).
1. Alter Your Perspective
Most portraits are taken with the camera at (or around) the eye level of the subject. While this is good common sense - completely changing the angle that you shoot from can give your portrait a real WOW factor.
Photo by striatic
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