How am I doing?

[matias_orchard]

Hello there,

 

Excuse the x-posting.

 

OK, I only want to take pictures of my daughters, and this is why I've been

wondering around this website... looking for information on how to improve my

portraiture style... ;-)

 

I know I need much more practice, but what do you think so far?

 

http://picasaweb.google.com/matias.orchard/Modelos

 

How am I doing? I would really appreciate your feedback.

 

Cheers,

 

MO

[luke_ballard]

Well, I see you haven't gotten many responses, but I will add my 2 cents, cause I do professional portraiture for a living. I am not to sure what camera or lens you are using, but I can say this, I can tell it seems you are letting the camera do a lot of the work, meaning probably using the auto settings. Your Depth of Field is pretty shallow, cause all of your background is blurred, so you are probably shooting with a pretty wide open apature.

This is my advice, a proper portraiture lens, and you can read this in just about any book on shooting portraiture, is a lens with a focal length of around 80-125. I like to shoot much of mine in the 90 to 120mm range. No distortion, use a more mid range apature and include some of the nice backgrounds to enhance the photo into a full photo, not just a snap shot of ppl smiling. Think about composure of the shot, look at your background, place your subjects in a nice way in your background, don't tighten up so much on your shots, you are shooting very tight, meaning you arn't leaving much room to crop or work on your photo for full effect. THink about it in an artistic way. Not just a pic, try and make a piece of art out of the photo, not just a snap shot. This means, go to nice places that enhance your daughters and thier attributes and use that background and backdrops to your advantage, let your subjects interact with the setting they are in. Also, watch how you are using your flash, if you have the sun behind your subjects, you are going to have to use flash to fill them, called fill flash, but make sure you use it to make an equal lighting in front and behind so it doesn't look like you used a flash. Basically it is just canceling out the light that is behind them, with using the flash to provide light in front of them. With that said, just kinda try and not put your subjects with the light directly behind or in front of them. Watch your shadows and highlights, meaning, when you compose the shot, look everywhere in the frame before you push the shuttter release, look at where the light is falling on them, do you have a shadow that is cutting right across thier face? or do you have a bright spot somewhere that you arn't paying attention to? look for everything before shooting. Basically, just try and combine your subjects with the setting and use them both to make a complete portrait. The whole purpose of a great portrait is to encompass who the person is and put that person in the place that they are most happy and comfortable, and use the setting to enhance your photo. Most of your photos have your subjects filling the entire frame, try and back up and include some things and settings and don't shoot your lens so open as to reduce your Depth of Field so much that it knocks out a beautiful background and setting that they are in.

Just a few tips, but keep trying! Think artistic, not sears or typical snap shots, try and make a beautifuly composed, lighted, and artistic photo. Remember, anyone can just point and shoot, what makes a photographer is someone that can turn a PIC into a PHOTOGRAPH. BIG DIFFERENCE!

 

Good luck and if you have any ?'s feel free to ask, if you want to see some of my portraiture work, write me and I can give you my address where you can check it out.

 

Take care and good luck!

 

L.

[matias_orchard]

Thanks, Luke. I guess you're right... but you left me kind of happy... because I was concern about exposure, and white balancing more than on the composition, which I know is as important, but this time their costumes were the important thing.

 

All those photos are crops of larger pictures, and you can actually look at some of the setting on the same webpage, on the right. f5.0 was the lower aperture setting used.

 

I use a 30D and a Tamron 17-50 lens.

 

What do you think about the "picture" quality (before saying photograph... ;-) )?

 

 

Cheers,

 

MO

[phoneguy]

Look <a href="http://www.photo.net/gallery/photocritique/filter">Here</a> for examples of the

best portraits. I use other peoples work to inspire me. Pay attention to what the best portrait

photographers do. Look at their photos, and pick them apart. Learn what makes it appealing.

Taking good portraits takes time. Luke has given you some excellent advice.

[zigzag]

That was good advice Luke. Matias, there are some excellent books around on portraiture and some excellent resources on the net. If you look at Luke's answer there is enough there for several projects: flash balance, composition, DOF, shadows, profiles, focal lengths, etc, etc. A good way to learn is break it down and concentrate on one thing in detail until it becomes second nature - e.g. say "today I am going to nail DOF" and then go take 100 photos varying DOF.

[luke_ballard]

Well, Thank you guys for letting me know that I did provide another one of our photographer friends with some good helpful advice. I really do love to help others to become better and if my experience helps then I love to give it.

 

I think for you Matias, Mr. Glen had a really good idea based on my advice, take one thing at a time and perfect it. We that do this for a living know, we have spent a lot of time perfecting one thing at a time. I did for exapmle when I was getting my Fine Arts Degree in Photography, I went out and said, I am going to go out and work on Depth of Field and shoot many many photos with different DOF's, seeing what they do to the feeling of my photos, understanding how it can change a photo from a lot of information and things to look at, to centering in on a subject and making them the focal point of the entire photo. When I completley understood that use of that technique, it helped me to make other techniques work to my advantage. Each thing you get better and better at will help you with the next challenge. You have good equipment. I have a 30D, I have a few more lens', but I am using the same camera sometimes as you. It is one of about 4 that I use. As far as the quality of your pics, its good, a good digital camera can give you good photo quality without you having to do much at all, just because it is a good camera and is designed well, but when I think of quality, I don't think of sharpness, clarity, good color balance, contrast and such, I can take a really bad shot image and with my knowlege of Photoshop, make it into a decent photo, the challenge is to make that great photo with your camera, and just use your imaging software to put the final touches on it. You need to have a strong image to work with first, good composition, good composure, good exposure, and then you use your software to fix minor little things that need to be corrected that you can't really control in the field. My 30D does a pretty dang good job of capturing the colors in a color photo correctly, but I still color correct it for as much perfection as possible, but I make sure I have a strong image, something that someone is going to stop at when they see it and say, "Hmm, im gonna look at this for a bit cause there is something about it that catches me and makes me think and wonder, how did that photographer do that, or wow, that is very amazing and is making me want to look at this longer". When you can make a photo like that, you are getting there! I had a teacher that took us through a gallery, full of photos on the wall and he said, "Do you know the average time that a viewer will look at a photo on the wall of a gallery?" His answer was 3 to 8 seconds, but if you can make that person, that viewer stop and look at your photo and think, make them have to have a thought about it, wondering how, or why, or what does this mean to me, then you have done your job well. My first photo to be accepted into a gallery was a changing expereince for me, mainly because I had a concept, I got a model, I thought for a long time about exactly how and what I was going to do to make that photo make the strongest impact on my viewer, the night of the gallery opening, I saw 20 or 30 ppl surrrounding my photo on the wall, and there were 10 photos next to it, but I had 25 or so ppl around mine talking about it, saying, what does that make you think about? What do you think it means? What do you think this photographer is trying to say with this photo? I sold 10 copies of that photo that night because ppl came to me and said, your photo caught me, I had to stare at it and think about what it meant to me and it made me have a reaction in my mind an emotion in my heart and it eneded up meaning something special to just me. That was an amazing feeling, but it took me over a week of practice and 5 rolls of 36exp film and so many different shots in the studio with that model trying all kinds of things I had learned to make the greatest impact on my viewer. That was a Fine Art photo, but portraits can be the same, you can stop a person in thier tracks with a very well shot, well composed, well thought out and executed photo. That is what it means to be a good photographer! Making an impact in ppls lives with your photos. Making them want to look at it over and over and think.

 

Glen really made a good point, take one of those things at a time and perfect it! You have a digital, so it doesn't cost anything to shoot 1000 pics, but think about each and really try and experiement, educate yourself and make sure you are aware of everything in that scene before you push that shutter release buttton. That seperates a point and shoot amatuer, from a real photographer, thinking and looking at every detail and making it right before they ever push the button, then, photoshop, it just helps to touch up and put the last little touch that makes it a "photograph". When you finish practicing and educating yourself, reading, and learning from shooting tons of photos, and you can take a pic and open it in photoshop and say, dang, there isn't anything else I can do to this photo to make it more beautiful, then you have become a photographer! You have risen above the point and shoot snap shop ppl, and the walmart portrait labs, and you have become a photographer! Don't worry, you are doing fine, just take each of those things I said, and like glen said, one at a time, learn them, perfect them, and then put it all together and make us some beautiful photos ok! I would love to see the results of that work! Your well on your way, your open to advice, you are wanting to learn, and you have good equipment, now you just have to practice and make it happen!:)

 

Good luck friend and I will check on your progess regularly! Keep posting to that place your putting your photos, I'll be looking for some of that practice and knowledge paying off! And it will my friend!

 

Best to you! Feel free to ask for help on a specific thing anytime ok, thats why itsa forum, we are all here to learn from eachother. ;)

 

Luke

[tridakfoto]

Matias ... Luke has given the best advice I have heard in awhile on this topic. Nothing else really has to be said. All I wanted to say was that with experience and trial and error you will continue to improve and looking at your photos I would use flash and light to be more creative as well as the composition and DOF. I use a 40D and prefer to use a longer range (my 70-200mm 2.8IS) for outdoor portraiture and a 50mm prime for indoor shots. I'm not telling you that you have to buy the 70-200 for outdoors as the 17-50 Tamron is great but maybe look into the 85mm 1.8 or at least try it for one day if you can get lend of one to see how you like it.

 

I've noticed your photos on a previous post when you were asking for advice and I can say I have already noticed improvement so like I said, in time you will be the one giving advice on this site ;)

 

Keep it up and happy holidays!

[matias_orchard]

Not much to say on this end, I guess....... Many thanks, Luke, for taking the time to write. I will follow your advice. I guess I will also take out my 70-200 (F4, though)... I'm using the flash already, and learning that as well...

 

But more importantly, I'm picking the right track on how to improve, I hope.... I WILL take DOF as a task for the next several hundred photos... and we'll see! The other thing is I need to take my models to somewhere else besides our backyard ;-)

 

Thanks much again!

 

 

Cheers,

 

MO