Portrait Photography Tips
Background
Hey wait a minute. We’re about to shoot a model, and we don’t care about the background, right? Well, too bad: background might ruin a picture. The background must help you focus on the subject. Try to make it less sharp by using small aperture values such as f/1.8 or f/2.
Got a compact digicam? I’ve got bad news for you: changing aperture with these tiny sensors won’t give you nice results as the pictures tend to be too sharp. You’ll have to go for SLR or DSLR.
Speaking of SLR, I avoid zooms like plague: their aperture is too high for nice portraits. A good and cheap start is a 50mm f/1.8 lens. For close-ups, go for a 85m to 100m f/1.8 lens.
If your background is too visible and has lines or elements, don’t make these elements overlap the model’s face. Vertical lines touching will ruin the composition. Try to keep the background simple and out of focus.
Tips:
* While the background shouldn’t interfere with the model, its texture or pattern can give an atmosphere to the image
Foreground is also important, as it gives more depth to the image. Reflections are a nice way to make it look more interesting:
Despite the numerous curves in this composition, the position of the head doesn’t hit any of them:
The longer the lens, the less deformations you’ll get. Hence, rather go far from the model and zoom in rather than shooting close with a wide angle lens.
Also don’t neglect the final presentation of the photo and its framing. I often play with weird frames and, no, I don’t use any specific plug-in such as Extensis Photoframe. What’s the purpose if you just select a preset and apply it to the image? It’s so much better to do this by yourself!
http://jmonzani.deviantart.com/journal/1435871/
Focus
Portrait has to focus on the face or an element of the face. Most often eyes need to be sharp. As I said, separate the face from the background with a shallow depth of field (DOF). You must be able to control this factor on your camera by setting manually the aperture, in order to blur the background. Most of my images are shot around f/1.8 or f/2.
Tips:
With a very tiny aperture value, both eyes might not be sharp altogether. Some people don’t like this but I don’t really care. Here is a shot with both eyes sharp
but not here
Exposure
I’ve already written a whole tutorial on that so I won’t go into details this time. Just switch to manual exposure so that the sequence of shots have the same settings.
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/2145710/
Tips:
* Manual exposure helps you focus on one specific exposure range. A good thing is to get close to the model and fill the frame with an average exposed skin. This will ensure that the skin is correctly exposed. Your background might then become too dark or too bright, but at least, the skin will be OK.
* Try to avoid direct sunlight: it causes too much difference between dark and bright areas.
* Backlighting might be a very good thing if you expose it correctly. For instance, this image was backlit by the sun
Exposure was manually set so that the skin is bright enough. Don’t try this with auto-exposure: the camera will compensate for backlighting and the subject will remain pretty dark.
Post-processing
All of my pictures are digitally post-processed. I mainly do color changes and local darkening. I like Photoshop’s adjustment layers, especially Curves: you can easily darken one specific area with them. Most people ask me how I’m correcting colors. I can’t give you answers because I use all types of adjustment layers.
Keep this in mind: there is NO general recipe! Don’t think that I always do the same operations. I could show you my adjustment layers but you won’t get the same results with your pics, simply because the initial colors will be different.
So what’s to do? Well, experiment and learn by yourself what are the possibilities of each tool. Then decompose your problem into smaller adjustments and apply them.
That’s it, I hope that this’ll be useful 
About the author: Jean-Sébastien Monzani is starting a pro carrier, and his favourite
photo subjects are portraits with a narrative aspect (he often shots series). The proper atmospheres and moods are achieved through digital adjustments.
Websites: www.jsmonzani.com and www.simplemoment.com
Pages: 1 2
See also: Photography Tips
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these tips were helpful. it makes me want to know more about how you do things and what you know. it makes me want to see more of your pictures and about them as well. thank you.