Portrait Photography How To

Bright summer days are great for trips to the beach, sitting around a pool, or casting a line into your favorite stream. But when it comes to outdoor portraiture, well, not so much.

We’ve sung the praises of using a 50mm lens for a while now including in this Shutterbug video that’s racked up nearly three million views on YouTube. Now another photographer has published his ode to the beloved “Nifty Fifty.”

Shooting indoors in natural light is fun but tricky. If it’s a sunny day and you have good window light, it’s easy to capture eye-popping portraits.

Do the subjects in your portraits look a little stiff and unnatural? Your problem might not be the person you’re photographing but, rather, your choice of camera settings.

One “rule” many photographers learn when first starting out is to “always shoot with the sun at your back.” This advice may work well for “Kodak Moment” snapshots, or for predictable photos of average scenes, but a different approach is called for if you’re after eye-catching imagery that stands out from the crowd.

One of the few mistakes that can totally ruin a photo is failing to achieve precise focus on the primary subject in a scene. There are a variety of camera settings and shooting techniques for increasing your odds of success, and today we’re going to concentrate on one of the most helpful.

Let’s face it: Image sharpness is an essential component of great photographs, whether they’re portraits captured in the studio or a landscape image taken outdoors. No matter how gorgeous the model, or how scenic the destination; if the image is soft all is for naught.