Steemit Photography School: These are the common mistakes in portrait photography

Photographing a human sometimes it can be a very difficult thing because
along his image is trying to capture his personality.

There are some common mistakes thatcan be done at the shooting
and it's very easy to avoid them

Let's see some of them

1. SHOOTING A PORTRAIT WITH A WIDE ANGLE LENS

How many times have you heared "the photographer made me look fat"

To photograph a portrait the ideal lenses are the tele lenses, from 50mm
to 70 or the best at 85

The telelenses have the ability to flatern the face an make it look better
and the wide angle lenses will distort the face and make it look bigger

It is ok to use a 35mm or 50mm lens but if you want to go closer you have to shoot with
85mm lens and more

18mm 1/1250sec f6.3

55mm 1/1250sec f6.3

1. THE LENS DID NOT FOCUSED IN THE EYE

"The eyes reflect's the soul of aa person" it is a phrase that we hear quite often
and it is a rule when photographing a portrait. This mean that you have to
focus in the eyes everytime you shoot a portrait

NOTE:
If the persons head is tilted, focus on the closest eye to you
an try to avoid showing the white part of the eye, so ask from the model
to look at the spot that the nose is pointing

1. SHOOTING AT THE WRONG TIME OF THE DAY

As you probably might know, the best time for photoshoting is when the sun is low
like in the down or the sunset.

The light is softer and in a low position, in adition with the midday when the sun is on
his highet position, then we have harsh shaddows and the model can not open her eyes
properly

Shooting at the right time it can lead us to an amazing result, also the colors of the sky
and the white ballance will be different

4.BAD USE OF FLASH

Shooting with flash is one more hard situation and it needs attention.

Out biggest concern is not to have hars shaddows on the face, for this we need
a bigger light source or some kind o a diffuser to soften the light
It is better also to use an off camera flash

Notice: if you do not have an of camera flash and you are using the on camera
flash, put a piece of papper like an A4 sheet to soften the ligh and go a bit further
from the model, (Arround 4-5 meters)

200mm f2.8 1/200sec | Flash on camera right with a 170cm umbrella

5.SHOOTING FROM THE WRONG ANGLE

The hight from where you shoot is one more impostant thing.
The safest position of the camera is right bellow the model's eye level

Many people are shooting from a very low position, but this can show the double chin effect
if there is and inside the modelas nose, but if we shoot from a higher possition we will make
our model look shorter
But with practice we can break the rules and shoot from any position we want and make it
also look flatering

In fashion photography we shoot many times from a lower level, so to make the models
look taller than they arem but also needs practice, or if you go higher, try to catch the eyes

1. WRONG APERTURE SETTINGS

The rule is simple. The smallest the number of the aperture (this means bigger aperture and more light comming in)
the more bokeh (blured abckground) you have, shollower depth of field. When shooting portrait try to have shollow depth of field and try to focus in the eyes.
Using showllow depth of field you can also remove distractions from the background

1. WRONG CHOICE OF BACKGROUND
   And at last the bavckground, we need to find a cleanbackground with less distraction
   to make our model pop up!

Also try to avoid trees or signs comming out from the head, it will look akward

NOTICE: To get better results try to use lenses with big aperture like f2.8 or even better f1,8 an f1.4
Blurring the background we removed the trash bin on the background

THat's all, I will try to post a lesson every week
I hope that you liked it