Portrait Photography How To

Have you ever returned from a vacation to a popular city, or to an iconic destination in the great outdoors, only to realize that your images look pretty much the same as those shot by everyone else? In the quick tutorial below you’ll learn simple techniques that are guaranteed to make your photos stand out from the crowd.

The topic of this quick episode from B&H Photo Video is environmental portraiture. Whether you’re a travel photographer looking to go beyond typical tourist photos, or a landscape shooter interested in adding a person within the frame for more compelling results, this two-minute episode is just what you need.

Instructor Maria Perez is a photographer and video producer based on the east coast, and she’s here with some great tips on posing subjects within different scenes, choosing a lens with the best focal length for the job, and putting it all together with attention-grabbing composition.

This lesson includes several effective techniques when shooting with wide-angle, standard lenses (35mm-50mm), and telephotos zooms from 70-200mm to 200-600mm. Perez provides links to her favored gear in the description beneath the video. Some of the poses she demonstrates are dependent upon the specific lens you decide to use.

Wide-angles tend to be the first choice of landscape photographers because of he utility they provide for capturing expansive vistas, but they’re not often considered appropriate for shooting portraits. Perez quickly dispels this myth with some helpful tips and compelling examples.

Normal lenses are not thought of as wide enough for shooting landscapes, but Perez disagrees. She says, “they are amazing for capturing your portrait subject within that landscape,” and she illustrates how to get the job done. The obvious benefit here is that you can still tell a story with your photos, while capturing images that are different from most.

Perez wraps up the lesson by bringing out the big guns, ordinarily used for wildlife photography. She insists that long telephotos are also incredibly useful for “capturing some of the best door portraits.” After listening to Perez’ techniques and viewing her results, we think you’ll agree. 

There’s much more to see on the B&H Photo Video YouTube channel, and we recommend visiting there often.

We also suggest checking out the tutorial we posted on a related subject, explaining a British pro’s secrets to capturing outdoor photos with perfect exposures.