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5 Potography techniques, tips and tricks for taking pictures of anything




  

1. Using window light
 You don’t need an expensive home studio lighting kit to take amazing portraits – a window and a reflector can help you achieve stunning natural results without spending too much.

Position your model at an angle to the window and use a white or silver reflector to open up any shadows across their face. A silver reflector will give a crisper quality of light than a white one, although the effect won’t be as subtle.

Be aware of any colour casts that may be introduced by features on the other side of the glass  as well – a lush green lawn can give skin tones a sickly quality, while late evening sunlight on a patio will reflect lots of warm light.







2. Use Aperture Priority mode
Aperture Priority gives you direct control over the aperture, and as a result the depth of field (DOF).

Fast prime lenses, such as 50mm f/1.4 and 85mm f/1.2 enable you to choose very large apertures for a shallow depth of field. This can help you create those creamy-smooth, out of focus backgrounds that give portraits a professional quality.

Working with such a narrow band of sharpness means that you need to be accurate with focusing – the entire portrait will look soft if you don’t focus accurately on the eyes.





3. Using a standard or telephoto lens
Wide-angle lenses are a great choice for photographing environmental portraits, where you want to show a person within a specific context. However, wide-angle lenses used close-up will distort facial features and creative unflattering pictures.

A better choice for portraits is either a standard lens or a short telephoto lens. The classic portrait focal lengths for a full-frame camera are 50mm, 85mm prime lenses and a 70-200mm zoom.
These will help to compress features and provide a more natural-looking result.




4. Shooting in burst mode
Whether you’re taking a child’s portrait or a group portrait, set your camera in its fastest drive setting. You don’t need to machine gun the shutter release, but shooting in short bursts will ensure you capture a fleeting range of expressions.

It also improves your chances of getting a shot where everyone’s eyes are open in a group portrait.
Even if you don’t capture everyone’s eyes open or their beaming smiles, having a range of shots taken fractions of a second apart means you can easily swap faces in Photoshop.




5. Family photo posing ideas
Think about how your arrangement of people in a group family portrait can tell a story about the relationship between the different members.

A simple idea is to place the emphasis on the patriarch or matriarch of the family, or the newest arrival. By grouping the rest of the family around them, you’ll be able to create a clear focal point.

For larger family group photos, use furniture – whether that’s a sofa for indoor shots or a gate for outdoor portraits – to break the group up. Sit the children in front of it and have the adults standing behind it.