Friday’s post covered Shooting The Full Moon At Moonset.
Did you get good shots of the moon? It was fabulous here in the Puget Sound and we even got out the telescope to get even closer to the moon.
Today’s experiment is fairly easy on the surface, but so is most photography when considered. Point, hit button, look at back of camera. But we want to go a little deeper and think about what we, meaning you, are shooting today.
Today’s topic is to shoot a portrait of someone or, if the mood strikes you, some animal. As is my plan with these experiments, I am going to back off telling you what to do and instead, this time, give you some things to consider when shooting. If this doesn’t work for you, please let me know in the comments section.
Things To Consider:
- Do you want to shoot in manual or aperture priority?
- Hint: Your aperture setting will be important here as you want to keep few things in focus. A good portrait typically uses varying degrees of focus to help bring attention to the subject. Knowing that, what do you want your aperture to be?
- You can also use differing amounts of light to help bring attention to your subject. Move your subject around to find good light.
- Not sure how to pose your subject? Me neither. But, Posing App will help you. It’s all of $3 and has 244 different poses. You can also take a look at Digital Photography School’s recent series on posing, which is taken from the app.
- Focus on the eyes.
- Consider the mood and emotion you want to convey. Not all great portraits are smiley, happy people holding hands.
- Once you have things set, check hair and small details. Do they help the portrait or detract?
There is a whole other world of things to consider when looking at complexion, clothes selection, advanced lighting, etc… We’re not heading there with this one simple experiment. I’m trying to get you to think of the baby steps it takes to get there. What are your settings? How is the subject framed? Where is the light coming from? How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
Please feel free to post your results if you fell the inkling.
Examples
Tomorrow’s topic is Sun Stars.
31+ Days Of Photography Experiments is a series written by professional photographer Peter West Carey on The Carey Adventures.Com. The series is designed to unravel the mysteries of photography so you can take better pictures through practical experiments on the material found in 31+ Days To Better Photography. Subscribe here to receive all the updates and bonus material. Your comments are always welcome.
Hi Carey. Thanks for sharing your experience with us, helping to improve our photography skills. Trying to access the app you mentioned in the article I get the following error “Missing offer id cookie”. Could you please look into it or give the name of the app. Thanks again.
Catalin,
It should be all better. If it doesn’t work, search on your phone for Posing App.
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