Hi all, Joshua here! Thank you to everyone who could attend our portrait meeting last Thursday, I had a great time interacting with you all. After a brief presentation on the basics of portrait photography, we got to practice shooting some portraits, as that is the best way to learn portraiture I believe. For those of you who couldn’t make it, here’s a quick recap.
Because there’s so much variability with portraiture, I wanted to primarily focus on the technical/settings and composition/style aspect of the art, leaving the rest up to your own practice and interpretation.
In portrait photography, you will generally find yourself using a very fast aperture, meaning a wide opening to allow for a lot of light to come through in addition to a shallow depth of field for good background separation. Something around F/1.8 - F/2.8 would be recommended. You do have to be careful however, as lower apertures tend to not be as sharp and it’s easy to miss focus especially on the eyes, so you want to ensure that your focus is tack sharp. As for focal ranges, people normally use 35mm lenses to 85mm lenses, however, I’ve seen many incredible portrait photographers utilize 20mm lenses or even 200mm lenses for some insane compression.
Depending on what kind of subject you’re capturing, you’re going to want to pay close attention to your shutter speed. If you are taking portraits of a dancer for example, you may want to use a faster shutter speed to freeze the motion of the dancer as opposed to a still model sitting on a stool in a studio, where you most likely won’t be needing a fast shutter speed. As for ISO, it’s always a good rule of thumb to just try to keep your ISO as low as possible to mitigate any loss of detail from grain.
An example of the rule of thirds
When it comes to composition, there is one dominating concept that is always taught when first learning about photography as a whole, and that is the rule of thirds. Dividing your frame up into 9 rectangles and placing your subject on one of the intersections on the grid will make for an eye appealing composition. There’s a lot of science behind why the rule of thirds is so great to the human eye, but in short, we just find it appealing as it draws the viewers’ eyes straight to it. Another popular way of framing your subject is using center framing, as it’s simple and straight to the point.
During the meeting, we also discussed posing and props. Props can enhance the story or feeling you are trying to invoke in your viewer, in addition to giving your model something to do with their hands. One of the most frequently asked questions I get from my portrait shoots is, “What do I do with my hands?” So giving them a prop is a perfect way to get them to interact and use their hands naturally.
It’s crucial to remember though, that these are all just GUIDELINES. You do not have to follow them to a “T”. Photography is a creative art, and you are never confined to strict rules.
“I break these guidelines all the time!” - Joshua R.
Portrait photography is such a broad topic with seemingly unlimited variation, so there’s no way I could fit all that information into this blog. With that being said, if you are really interested in portraiture and wish to learn more or further your skills, I recommend finding a friend to practice shooting portraits with. YouTube is also an incredible resource to dive deeper into the specifics of portraiture. If you find yourself lost trying to think of a portrait idea, I’d suggest looking on Instagram or Pinterest for inspiration! So, what are you waiting for? Go out and shoot some portraits! The best way to improve your portraiture and find your style is through repeated exposure (bad photography joke). Hopefully you found this information somewhat useful!
Some other stuff for those who are here for the first time…
“See this mask? Have it over your nose.” - Masks is always required in our meeting.
Any Purdue student, staff, or faculty can join our club regardless of skill level or photography gear. We would like to build an inclusive community of photographers. We do not have membership dues, but we will gratefully appreciate any donations. It would really help us during this difficult time. In addition, if you want to have access to the studio or darkroom, the yearly fee is $20. If you pay for the studio and darkroom access, you should receive an automated email with the instructions on how to access our facilities.
Thank you for reading our blog posts of the Fall 2020 semester. We will continue to post in our blog throughout the semester to recap our meetings in case you missed it. Feel free to look at our past blogs as well. If you have not already, please sign up for our email list on our homepage. If you do not receive our weekly emails, please check your Cisco Quarantine and add our email to your safelist to make sure you receive future emails.
If you want to join our GroupMe to discuss photography topics with other members, please click here. We will not be sending any notifications for club events in the chat, so it can simply be used for creating conversation.
Lastly, you can follow us on our Instagram page! We would love to feature some of your work. Just tag us or use the hashtag #purduephotoclub, and we will take your submission into consideration. You can join our Facebook group where you can ask questions or share some of your photos as well.
Once again, thank you and see you next week!