Posts Tagged ‘portrait photography’
Photo shooting human faces falls in the realm of portrait photography, a difficult category of this art and science because of the emphasis put on emotions and context. You can shoot such photos in a studio or make portraiture completely environmental; it all depends on circumstances. We all know what portrait photography is like if we watch our official papers or IDs. Such pictures are small and they are usually taken in studios with digital cameras, and a controlled background.
Portrait photography enables a larger control over the background when performed in a studio. Opinions are divided on whether to use seamless paper roll and take portraits against them or not. This is common practice for neutral portrait photography is normally associated with this practice, but there could appear elements of distractions in such portraiture forms. Yet, you can use other backdrops too in order to achieve the kind of environment you consider adequate for portrait photography. As for special effects, there are many portable equipments that you can make use of.
The focus is on the subject first and foremost with portrait photography, and even when you shoot small pictures or formats, you can still use tools to perform enlargement at excellent quality. Then there is the issue of light and shadows on the subject’s face, even if you have a great lighting system. The eyes and the nose are the most important for portrait photography, when it comes to lights and shadows. And this issue certainly requires careful consideration. If you use a fast telephoto lens, the field depth will be reduced and the nose and the eyes will look very sharp.
Places with diffuse light and neutral background are the best for portrait photography. From all the public spaces with great powerful skylights, we can mention art museums, galleries and universities. If you are studying photography, there are lots of sources you can use to improve skills. Great photos come with experience most of the time, and you will see improvement with every new thing you learn. People with training in portrait photography hardly need any tips here.
Portrait photography depends on soft and off camera light; anything other than that can ruin the photo. The best photos are those that have no shadows whatsoever. As for environmental shooting conditions, overcast days are the best you can hope for. If you shoot on a sunny day, portrait photography requires a reflector or an electronic flash.
Film Cameras have always have always been around for family pictures. They can really help family members keep track of moments in time. Of course, during weddings/nuptials the handy cameras are are always somewhere around.
It is a fact that wedding celebrations are one of the great occasions in an individual’s life. Many people wait for the day they can have a great wedding day with the one that they love. And in order for them to have at least a good memory of this great event, digital cameras are used.
You know, it’s amazing how far our technology has come with regards to photography. Many digital cameras are now being introduced in order to help people capture meaningful occasions in their everyday everyday moments.
There are also varieties of digital cameras that are being made especially to capture the most treasured times in our everyday lives. Among these devices are digital cameras. These devices are really great for capturing happy moments during events like weddings.
Since the introduction of digital cams, they have outsold film cameras. Thus, this makes wedding day pictures a more popular service than film photography. How come?
Well, this may be because digital photography can take wedding pictorials into new heights. Cameras used for digital photography provides a lot of new advantages to their users.
One of the major advantages of these digital cameras is that they let users skip the usual film separation process, which is among the most time-consuming processes in photography. So, removing one time-consuming process would mean getting your pictures back quickly, right? And when living in a a hectic world, quick results are a must have!
More advantages of digital wedding photography is that, even though it provides fast results, the quality of each processed photo is not in fear of being lost. This means that no matter how fast you get your pictures, the result is still stunning.
Another advantage of digital wedding day pics is that it provides customization options to its users. This would mean that a user can edit photos even before they are printed. You can change the size, brightness, contrast or sharpness of your picture. You can even add or remove some details on your photos.
Digital photography has also joined with cellular phones. This means that you only need to bring a phone to sneak some images during weddings. Nevertheless, it is a fact professional digital cameras can provide much more quality than the cameras of cell phone camera. Most professional digital cams have 6 mega pixels while cellular phones usually have lower mega pixel.
But perhaps the greatest advantage of digital wedding photography is the availability of your photos to be reproduced over and over again without making any variations between the first printed photo and the last photo printed. Digital photography allows users to save their files on their computers, which would mean that they can be reproduced without wearing out any film, since it doesn’t need one.
But, no matter how great a technology is, it’s still not perfect. One of the major disadvantages of digital photography is that it is not ideal for 4-color printing. Why? Well this is because of the fact that there will always be a variation between the images you will see on your pc monitor and your 4 color printed photograph.
Why? Well, computer monitors use RGB, right? Four color printing uses CMYK. RGB and CMYK have entirely different outputs. So, no matter what you do, the image on your monitor will never be the same as your 4 color photos, unless there are computer monitors that also use CMYK to produce vivid colors for the images and texts.
Nevertheless, digital wedding photography is still the best choice than film photography and that is also a fact. Take a peek and see on your own.
Author: Richard Rives of Richard’s Photography in San Antonio.
The digital camera has led to increasing numbers of people taking to photography. They love to be out there happily snapping away, and many of the pictures they take are of friends and family. Portraits, head and shoulders pictures, are some the most popular pictures these amateur snappers love to take. Unfortunately, although portraits or head and shoulders photos sound easy enough to take, quite often the results are less than great.
Too close, to far away or heads and other body parts mysteriously missing, let’s face it we’ve all been there. To help avoid those problems lets look at some basic principles and tips for taking portrait photography.
This can be avoided if we take a little time to learn some of the basics. To frame the shot the best, and most obvious technique, is to make use of the cameras preview screen. Ensure everything you want to capture is centred in the screen as the photo produced will be exactly as you see it in the LCD screen.
Don’t worry about ‘posing’ your portraits as off the cuff or spur of the moment photographs can be the best. If the subject suddenly moves out of range or you do not like the way the picture has worked out your digital camera allows you to erase it and you can try again. Just delete the picture and move on.
One of the best tips in taking portrait photography, either posed or spontaneous shots, is to ensure that you fill the frame and use every available bit of space. Everything in the frame of the photo should add something to the portrait.
Another basic factor to consider when taking your portraits is the lighting. Most of us will I suspect be taking the majority of our portraits outdoors in the daylight so lighting won’t really be a consideration. But if you are taking your pictures at an indoor location, including your home, you need to consider lighting.
When shooting inside light beaming through a window can be an interesting aid as it can create attractive shadows. Make sure the shadows are not too strong especially if the light is very bright.
Finally, when taking portrait photography remember to focus on the eyes as they are a persons most important, and revealing, feature.
If you are a sports fan, you know what it means when a team goes into a “rebuilding year”. It is just when the owners or coaches decide its time to train new members and correct bad habits in others. And invariably, what team leadership says when they go into such a time is that they are going “back to basics.”
Sometimes it’s good for us as photographers to go back to basics. And, of course, if you are just getting started in the world of photography and want to learn “the ropes”, the basics are a natural start. But you want the basics of what the professionals know about the craft of photography.
Anybody can take a portrait. I attended a wedding reception where the wedding party left a disposable digital camera on each table at the reception for guests to snap photos. Before the evening was over, it was all those youngsters that were walking about taking pictures from the dirty dishes to their own underwear. Those were not photographers and while those pictures will undoubtably get a couple of laughs, these are not the kind of professional pictures people want for their long-term memories.
Now don’t get too upset about confusing technical terms. Aperture is just a term for how wide your camera lens is open to let in light. And shutter speed is just how long you let the light come in to affect the picture. For getting a shot of a fast moving event, let the lens opening real wide but a short shutter speed so you capture the event quickly and close the window so the picture is caught before more light hurts the quality.
Photography is about being able to see light and light situations. You can and will get learn a lot about lenses and flash photography and other ways to turn the control over the lighting of a shot to you. So add to your core skills of photography a willingness to never stop learning. The better and more sophisticated you get in your ability to work with the equipment, the more you will learn and the more you will want to learn.
You can get a greater control over these basic controls of the camera such as aperture and shutter speed by learning how to switch from automatic settings to manual settings. The program mode setting on any digital camera is there for any novice photographer who doesn’t care about really learning the basics of photography. So they give you some basic settings like landscape, portrait and sports settings. By switching to manual, you can learn what settings work best in different situations.
And that takes us to the most important basic about becoming a great photographer and that is practice. Take some time with your equipment and play with it. Take it to situations and take photos with different aperture and shutter speed settings, in outdoor and indoor settings and different orientations to light. Don’t be alarmed when some of your images don’t come out correctly. That’s part of the learning curve.
By learning by doing, you will build your confidence in your work and eventually become a great photographer. But don’t get cocky, there is always more to learn. And that is one of the fun things about photography, isn’t it?
Photography in San Antonio by Richard’s Photography- 2010 Senior Portraits
When you think of Hollywood in the 1930’s, you think of photographs by people like George Hurrell.Amazing shots of the great stars of 30’s film… Harlow, Bogey, all of ‘em… the actors who filled the screen in the 1930’s.But the ease of the digital era makes fewer photographers eager to take on difficult techniques.
From the Hollywood of the 30’s, Dallas Photographer Mark Oristano has created “Hollywood/1935″.”
“I always loved Hurrell’s work,” says portrait photographer Oristano, “and a couple of years back I studied with Michael Grecco, the great portrait photographer from L.A. He taught us about Mole-Richardson’s and Fresnels and old-style, constant lighting.I found some of the old Mole’s on ebay and began to work with them.”
But to get the true effect, Oristano decided to step back from digital and return to the film camera.But this was a very special film camera.
“It’s a 4×5 Speed Graphic from the US Army Signal Corps from World War II. It’s the same model camera that Joe Rosenthal used to take the famous Iwo Jima photo. It’s sixty-plus years old and it still takes great shots. You get detail out of the 4×5 negative you don’t get, even in hi-res digital.”
The old-time look has begun to catch on in Dallas, where former sportscaster Oristano has been shooting engagement shots, senior portraits and more in the Hollywood/1935 style.
“The look on their faces when they see the shot is worth it.when they see their 17×22 fine art print they usually just gasp.”
The shoots take about twice as long as an average portrait session given the delicacy of the lighting. The techniques, while fairly simple to figure out from the old Hollywood photos, are often difficult to replicate. But with enough practice, you can be throwing shadows with the best of them and making anybody look like a star.