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Jonathan’s Photo Corner: Taking Better Portraits

Monday, November 15th, 2010

Portraits are my favorite kind of photo to take. The way I see it, there are hundreds of thousands of photos of Crater Lake, and there are already a lot of great shots of tigers. It’s hard to imagine taking a picture of these things that would be really different or better than those who’ve gone before me. But my family and friends don’t have an army of shutterbugs gathering around them at dawn and dusk. Anyone can take a picture of the sunset, but the opportunity to shoot a Kelly or a Beatrice in its natural habitat is unique to me.

Unfortunately, people are harder to take pictures of than sunsets. I am not a portrait photography genius, but I have learned a bit over the last few years. Here are some tips to make your portrait shots a little better. All are pictures I’ve taken at one time or another, and when I say “boring” I’m referring only to the style, not to the subject!

Use the Rule of Thirds

Boring

Better!

This is an old photography rule. It’s kind of boring to have your subject sitting in the middle of the frame. Look at the first picture above: sure, it’s a picture of a beautiful woman in a beautiful tulip field, but it’s otherwise plain. Instead, imagine that the frame of the camera is cut into thirds horizontally and vertically, like a tic-tac-toe board. Try to align the major lines of the picture (for instance, the line of the horizon or the center of someone’s body) with those lines. In the second picture, the beautiful woman’s face is roughly aligned with the right third of the frame. Which picture catches your eye?

Don’t Take Pictures in Bright Sunlight

Boring

Better!

I have done a bit of engagement photography, and couples have been known to pull me into a bright, sunny area. “Look at all this light!” they exclaim. Well, there’s such a thing as too much light. Direct sunlight makes harsh, unflattering shadows. It makes people squint, and it eventually gives you skin cancer. It’s possible to take great photos in sunlight–it’s just a lot harder. Do yourself a favor and head for the shade. A cloudy day can make for some gorgeous, soft light.

Fill the Frame

Boring

Better!

Your camera probably has a zoom feature. Use this to get closer to whoever you’re taking a picture of, and to get rid of all of the other distracting things that would otherwise be in the photo. Sometimes you want to take a picture of a person and the huge frying pan behind them, but if your primary goal is to take a picture of the person themselves, try to keep all that other stuff out of the picture. Fill up the frame with your subject.

Black and White Saves the Day

Example 1

Example 2

Do you know why so many portraits are shown in black and white? It’s because it covers over a multitude of sins. Is it kind of motion blurred? Someone’s skin looks super yellow or pink and you can’t fix it? Focus off by a mile? No problem! Turn off the color and it’s like turning on a switch deep in the brain that says “Everything about this photo was done on purpose by an artist.” For some reason people expect color photos to be perfect, but grainy, blurry, poorly composed black and white pictures are just fine. No, they’re better. Go figure.

Shoot From Above, Not Beneath

Boring

Better!

If you’re taking a photo of someone, straight-on is not a bad way to go. However, if you’re trying to get creative by shooting from an unusual angle, you’re not as likely to get pleasant results from shooting from beneath, because that’s mostly going to get a picture of someone’s neck and chin. Instead, get on a chair and shoot down. It can be surprisingly flattering.

Don’t Shoot from Close Range

Boring

Better!

Shooting from close range is the easiest way to take a picture, and when you’re in cramped quarters it might be hard not to. However, shooting someone from close range exaggerates their features. You don’t want that. Step back a little bit and then zoom in until you’re close. Their features will look more balanced and natural. I’ve heard that when photographers are shooting professional models, they use often very big zoom lenses so that they can get back a long ways to take the fullest advantage of this effect. You don’t need a big zoom lens, though–the one on your camera will do. Just use it to its fullest extent!

Use the Three-Quarters Profile

Boring

Better!

When you ask to take a picture of someone, their natural instinct is to face the camera directly and smile. This is great, but might not lead to an interesting portrait. Instead, try having them facing slightly to the right or left (while still looking at you). It adds a lot of depth to their face and a little more interest to the shot.

Shoot Outside During the Golden Hour

Boring

Better!

The Golden Hour is the term photographers use to refer to the hour after sunrise or the hour before sunset. If you’re shooting outside during the Golden Hour, it’s almost hard to take a bad picture. There’s beautiful, golden light and lots of indirect, warm illumination bouncing around. Take pictures of your family during this magical time and be amazed!

That wraps it up for this episode of Jonathan’s Photo Corner. Do you have any tips for taking great portraits? Have a question for another episode of Jonathan’s Photo Corner? Let us know!

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Jonathan’s Photo Corner: Buying Your First Digital SLR

Monday, October 4th, 2010

Recently, a friend asked me for recommendations on buying digital SLRs, and of course I was very excited to be a camera know-it-all and wrote a very long response. Here it is if you’re in the market!

Brand

Your average digital point and shoot is a sort of extended life disposable camera, but SLRs are meant for greater things and the list of accoutrements with which you adorn and extend the camera is considerable. Lenses! Flashes! Remotes! GPS loggers! Straps! For this reason, I personally recommend buying either Canon or Nikon, which are the big two players and are constantly trying to outdo each other, to the great delight of their customers and respective fanboys. You will pay a bit more than you would pay for equivalent performance from a second-tier brand, but you get access to a huge range of compatible lenses and other gear and the knowledge that the company is in the photography game for good.
 
I personally prefer Nikon due to the ergonomics of the cameras; Nikon tends to have more hardware buttons, which can be held down in combination to do common tasks like format the memory card or reset the shooting settings to default. But many folks I respect prefer Canon so the best thing to do is to figure out which feels the best in your hand.
 

Full Frame vs. Crop Frame

Some dSLRs have a sensor the size of a regular piece of film (35mm); most, however, have a smaller sensor. This creates no end of confusion.
 
The basic thing to remember is that full-frame sensors are better in many regards (e.g. low light performance), but smaller sensors have their own strengths–most notably, a crop factor that basically gives all lenses about 1.5x the magnification power they would have on a full-frame body, and a large selection of small-sensor-only lenses. Full-frame lenses will work with small-frame bodies, but not the other way around, so you can think of the small-frame sensors as a little more versatile.
 
FF bodies and lenses are generally more expensive so I wouldn’t recommend them unless you need lots of performance/are thinking about eventually going pro.

About That Lens…

 
I think one big mistake people make when buying their first SLR is shopping for the camera and then just getting whatever lens comes with it by default (photography nerds will refer to this lens, with occasional derision, as the Kit Lens). Some come with good lenses, some with so-so lenses. Either way, you’re usually looking at a midrange zoom lens, usually 18-55mm or so. That is about a 3x zoom, which surprises many people because they assume that a big ol’ camera with a big ol’ lens is going to be able to see basically into the future, and are disappointed to find it can’t even see as far as their point-and-shoot. Some people think zooming a long way is super important, although I am not one of them.
 
The reason not paying attention to the lens is a mistake is that lenses last WAY longer than bodies. SLRs contain a mechanical shutter, which is usually rated for a certain number of clicks, and digital SLRs in particular become obsolete fairly quickly due to the rapid pace of innovation in the dSLR world. If you stick with SLRs and have one for the whole time your child is growing up, you might go through 2-3 SLR bodies, but there’s no reason you should ever have to replace a lens unless you break it. There are lenses made in the 50′s that still work fine on today’s dSLRs.
 
All that to say–do some research on the lens that comes with the camera, since it is the more lasting investment. If it’s generally disliked or if you dislike it, then buy the camera body by itself (this is almost always possible and usually easy) and buy the lens you like separately. Keep in mind, too, that there could be a boatload of kit lenses for sale on the secondhand market, since people often try to unload them when they buy a nicer lens.
 

A Secondary Lens?

If you only get one lens, it makes sense to get a zoom that covers a wide range of useful perspectives without having to perform the tedious lens swap. However, a midrange zoom, especially the cheaper one that comes with the camera, is usually a “slow” lens, with a small maximum aperture, and thus using it indoors means either using the evil, evil flash or cranking up the ISO until the picture looks like it’s from TV before the switch to digital. (Disclaimer: That’s just on older bodies; today’s cameras actually have pretty awesome high ISO performance, which may negate this entire bit of advice.)
 
If you have the budget for a 2nd lens (~$200), you can get a lovely lens that not only will let you shoot without a flash almost all the time but will also have a nice, shallow depth of field that works so well for portraits. I recommend Nikon’s 35mm f/1.8 (Canon carries a very similar lens)–the 50mm is half the price but you’ll have to back up across the room if you want a picture with more than one person in it, which is so often the case indoors. You have probably seen me doing this at parties. Anyway, when it comes to taking pictures of babies, nothing beats a fast prime for a lovely portrait. Most all the pictures of Beatrice on our blog and my Flickr were taken with a secondary lens, not the zoom.
 
Another good option in the Nikon world is the 18-200mm lens, which is the one to get if you only want to own one lens and don’t want to worry about swapping. This is basically a 11x stabilized zoom lens that goes all the way from a wide-angle landscape lens to a very long portrait lens. There’s probably a Canon equivalent.
 
Basically, think about what kind of pictures you want to take and then figure out what kind of lens you will need to take that kind of picture. Maybe you don’t care about low-light portraits and shallow depth of field like I do but do care a lot about macro shots or about zooming into a small detail from a good ways away. My advice is to look on Flickr and other sites for the kind of pictures you want to take, then dig into the EXIF data where available to figure out what kind of lens was used to take the picture–the most important numbers are the aperture (F/xx) and focal length (mm). Get a lens with the same aperture and focal length available and you have the ingredients to take the same kind of picture.
 

Get a UV filter

Some people can say with a straight face that a UV filter cuts the haze often seen in the distance of landscape shots. I am not one of them. However, you should buy a UV filter for your favorite lens and keep it on all the time, because it’s dirt cheap as photo things go and it protects the glass of the lens itself from things like bumps and scratches and small children.

Video

 
I don’t know if you’re the video type but you should know that almost all today’s dSLRs record video as well. This is sort of awesome because using an SLR to record video makes your home videos look pretty pro if you know what you’re doing. But not ALL dSLRs do it yet, so check if you want the feature. I’m pretty sure that one recent episode of House was recorded entirely on a Canon 5D mkII.
 
So… there you have it. Basically, buy a name brand, don’t skimp on the lens, and the most important thing is the kind of pictures you want to take.

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Jonathan’s Photo Corner: Making a Blurry Background

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

Welcome to Jonathan’s Photo Corner! I (Jonathan) am only an amateur but I have done a lot of photos for family and friends over the years. In Jonathan’s Photo Corner, I will try to answer some of the questions that people often ask me about photography.

One of the most common questions that people ask me is this one:

How do I make the background blurry?

Here is an example in which the subject of the photo is crisply focused but the background is a soft blur:

The always-beautiful Kelly.

Unfortunately, there’s no single dial or setting on your camera that alone controls the blurriness of the background, but there are several things you can do in combination that will help your cause. Here they are, from the easiest one to the hardest.

Step back from the subject, then use the zoom on the camera to get closer.

No zoom--background is relatively sharp.

Zoomed in--background is getting blurrier!

Imagine that the background is always going to be a little blurry because the camera can’t focus on everything at once (and, of course, it can’t). Now, if you zoom into that blurry background, it’s going to be even blurrier.

There’s actually an optical reason that a zoom lens helps create a blurry background, but it’s much more boring to explain.

Anyhow, if you’re taking a picture of a person, stepping back and then zooming in is a good idea anyway. It’s flattering to your subject, because the closer you are to the person you’re taking a picture of, the more distorted they will appear. Taking a picture from farther away makes them look more natural. Try it.

Use macro mode, if you can.

Macro mode makes for a blurry background even with a point and shoot camera.

Here’s where we learn about a little thing called “hyperfocal distance”. Just kidding! Hyperfocal distance is for nerds. Just remember that when you focus on something close, everything that isn’t close is going to be blurry. When you focus on something that’s far away, lots more things, including the background, that are also far away are going to be in focus. (Unless you’re zooming in. See above.)

The image above was taken with an inexpensive pocket camera, not a fancy SLR. You can get very pro-looking blurry backgrounds with a cheap camera if you’re using Macro.

If your camera has an aperture priority mode (usually A or Av on the dial), use it to make the aperture as big as possible.

A typical camera's mode dial. The A is the one you want. (Image from here).

This is tricky for three reasons: first, many cameras don’t have this mode; second, unless you’re shooting in fairly bright sunlight, your camera is probably making the aperture as big as possible anyway; and third, adjusting the aperture is counter-intuitive.

If you have an A or Av mode on your dial, give it a try. Remember this. Say it three times before you go to bed tonight:

The smaller the F-number, the bigger the aperture.

The smaller the F-number, the bigger the aperture.

The smaller the F-number, the bigger the aperture.

Try taking a picture very close-up with a small aperture (like F11). Then try the same picture with a bigger aperture (like F3). You will see a huge difference in the background blur.

If your desire for blurry backgrounds cannot be quenched with all of the above, an SLR is what you need.

Here is the ugly truth: the soft, blurry backgrounds you see in many professional photos are the result of, well, professional cameras and lenses. You can’t really create that much blur with a point-and-shoot camera, and this is why:

The size of your point-and -shoot digital camera's fake film.

The size of a digital SLR's fake film.

Digital cameras are kind of similar to film cameras, except they have a single piece of fake film that gets exposed instead of a frame of real film. There is a direct relationship between the size of the fake film that digital cameras use and the blurriness of the background. Small fake film = not very blurry. Big fake film = blur galore.

Finally, if you really want to understand what makes pictures blurry from a mathematics/optics perspective, you want to read the Wikipedia article on depth of field. And if you want to stare for hours at photos with gorgeously blurry backgrounds, browse the Flickr tag DoF.

OK, so in review: if you have a typical point and shoot camera, you make a blurry background by using your zoom and/or focusing on something close. If you have a fancier camera, you do that and adjust your aperture, too. See you next time on Jonathan’s Photo Corner!

The End.

What would you like to see featured on Jonathan’s Photo Corner next?

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