Portrait - please comment

[shm]

I have had a former colleague on a visit with her two children for some portrait shots.

Portrait photography is still new to me, and I managed to screw the session up because of wrong set-up of the camera (too slow shutter speed and wrong ISO).
This resulted in many of the pictures being blurred, especially of the boy (age 6) as he couldn't sit still for more than half a second at a time.

The girl (age 4) didn't want to be photographed on that day, but I think I managed to get a couple of nice shots of her - hopefully her mother think so too

Some of the best are these.
What do you gents think, where can I improve? (apart from shutter and ISO )

 

[lister]

Hi Soren, some good shots there. Whilst I don't do a lot of portrait type photos a few suggestion I thought of were to try and get your subject to turn slightly side on if you can; it should be a relaxed posture and possibly with the head tilted rather than on a level plane. Secondly, possibly using a second flash or an additional light source to try and balance the light falling on the kids faces.

That said, I really liked the second photo with the nice relaxed pose. I find with kids getting them to laugh will quite often get the relaxed happy pose you want.

Anyway, good results.

Cheers.

 

[celestino]

Soren, the pics looks fine! i have never taken any portraits, but i would have to agree with Sean with using more light to remove any shadows on the faces. Good work and you are a brave lad trying this! i can only seem to work with inanimate objects as they sit still for as long as i want them to!

 

[Alacrity59]

I've no advice. Just trying to learn as well. How far forward are the kids from the background?

 

[shm]

Thanks gents.

I agree, either another light source to the right or dimming from the left.

The kids are about 3-4 feet away. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of space, I would like the possibility to increase that distance to get the background more out of focus, but that is just not possible.
I need to decrease aperture as well (helps shutter speed too), I'm still thinking too much of a good depth-of-field like in a SOTD

I have to think in another manner in this portrait photography than I'm used to with stills and landscapes. Practice, practice, practice

 

[Mr Bob]

Hello Søren,

I am most certainly not a portrait photographer, but I will offer my thoughts for what they are worth.

1. I appreciate that you don't have much room, but that background needs a much softer focus. Open that aperture as far as it'll go... f/1.8 if you got it. Keep the focus on the eyes.

2. As indicated, the lighting needs adjustment. The left and right need better balance. I think the pro's use 2/3 or 1/2 stop difference for a soft shadow for children? Also, if possible, I think less light, or focused light on the backdrop would be good. Is that natural light? If it is, you could manually set a flash to the opposite side, stopped down just a bit.

The first photo of the boy is a nice relaxed, natural looking shot that should make mom happy. The last photo of the girl is a natural, warm smile, though her body language says that the day is done (would like to have her angled a bit though). I like those photo's, and with adjustment to lighting and focus, they'd be real nice.

 

[the_edski]

I have no photo skills, but I really like the 1st picture of the girl. Perfectly captures the curiosity of youth. "What is she looking at?" Doesn't matter, all that we know from the picture is that it must be entrancing.

 

[Amer]

I'm no photo pro, and certainly not anything with portraits. But I felt I'd post these that I took back in early January of this year just as a learning experiment/attempt to get some pics for a Valentine's Day card for the family featuring our daughter. These are unedited besides maybe cropping on the 2nd. I really don't remember.

Like you, this attempt taught me about how important shutter speed is, even when you think the kid is sitting perfectly still. The setup is about at 10x10 area where my kitchen table usually sits but was moved. It's right next to a huge sliding glass door on a cloudy day (huge softbox?) that is about 3 feet to the right. She is sitting on a chair, about 2 to 3 feet in front of the hanging backdrop we made.

All these pictures were taken with a Canon T4i with a 50mm 1.8f lens.

The first thing to keep in mind, we all love that blurry background, but at 1.8 you only get a few inches at best of the focus plane.
In this first picture, I think I had it wide open at 1.8. The shutter speed was low, resulting in blurring, but even still you can tell with focus on the eyes, the back side of her hair, outfit, chair is already out of focus. This is b/c of the tiny amount of focal distance in combination with the tightness of the frame. There is no cropping here. I wish I had closed it a stop or two to increase that focal distance. You can also see the background blurring there. Not the greatest, but it's there. It's all about camera to subject to background distance. The closer the camera is to the subject and the farther the background is, the more background blur you are going to get.....at least, that's what I've found. That might not actually work out with real life, lol. Always put focus on the eyes!




Now the 2nd shot, which I think is a bit closer to what you are doing - the camera is farther from the subject. I might have closed the aperture a few stops to 2.2 or 2.8, but I don't remember. The focal plane is larger so more of the background is in focus. I also might have increased the shutter speed here a bit to get less motion blur, but again I don't remember.



So my advice is, tighten that frame, get your aperture right. If you're going to have multiple kids or elements in the picture, position them in whatever goofy way you have to in order to get the picture tight and full of what we want to see. Most people don't care about seeing all of the outfit, full body shot, etc. etc. It's usually torso and up at most.

Of course, nothing helps more than a great location, the golden hour, and a little bit of tweaking in post.....I took this a couple weeks ago. The sunflowers are maybe a foot to two feet behind her.

 

[petr]

You've got great color in the skin tones. I focus on eyes to make the portrait pop and usually everything else follows.

 

[Dad3*3]

Photography can be fun and frustrating at the same time. Good on you for asking for advise. I might be able to offer a few suggestions.

Looks like you are using all natural light, maybe a window camera left, is that correct? If so and assuming you don't have a studio full of lights you can still make that natural light work for you. What would help is some type of reflector camera right. You want the light to bounce back and wash over the subject at an angle so that you can still make out shapes through the use of shadows. That gives the image more of a 3D effect. This could be something simple like a piece of white foam board, you don't need anything fancy to start. Just getting a little fill light on the left side of the photo, right side of the subject, would add more dimension to the shot. In most portraits you want to see the eyes and as others mentioned, your camera's focus point should be right on the eye. You also want enough light on the eyes to highlight them in the shot. Many will use a ring flash to do just that.

I wouldn't always use the lens wide open as some have suggested. Shooting at f1.8 or f1.4 or 1.2 for that matter has some drawbacks. First at that aperture your subject better not move. The focus plain is so thin at those apertures that any movement of either you or the subject will throw off the focus enough to spoil the shot. This is especially true with children. Stop down a little and you will open up the focus plain enough and still be able to blur the background.

Speaking of Backgrounds, an iron goes a long way unless you were going for that look.

Next, watch your composition. Try not to cut off hands in these type of poses. The first shot added by Amer above is a good example of when it is OK to cut off arms. The other two that he added also show you good examples of framing, they are all very nicely composed.

I'll end this with one other suggestion. If you are using a tripod add an inexpensive shutter release. You can compose through the viewfinder but it's nice to have the remote especially with kids.

Now have fun and keep snapping, in 10 years you'll look back fondly on all the images and be glad you took the time.

 

[Lamb Root]

Hey Søren,

I like 1st and 4th photo a lot. I think all are very good but these two are great IMO. I've had very limited experience with children photography indoor but outdoor is a whole different thing. I'd suggest the later I you have the chance. I'd suggest using a long lens, as long as you feel comfortable with. Also a BIG distance between you and the kids. I know this sounds a little weird, but this can give some nice results. If using something as long as 200mm e.g., then f2 is more than enough for sharp pictures of their sharp little heads. Cloudy days are usually the best, sunsets can be marvelous but are also tricky because of the shadow part. Remember to use that advanced tracking auto thing for focusing if you have that option. Kids are too fast for a manual lens today. Either we are getting slow or these new cereals give them extra speed, I don't know.

 

[shm]

Thank you very much, it is great advice you are all offering, and I am taking notes

@Amer
That is some great shots, you have a very cute daughter.
I especially like the last one - the composition and colours really appeals to me.

@Dad3*3
You are right about daylight from the left, but I actually have two worklights on the right mostly pointing upwards to bounce off from the ceiling. If you take a good look at the photo with both kids, you can see a difference in the colour tone of the backdrop, because the lamps in the worklight has a colour temperature of 6500K (energy saving bulbs). I do have halogen lamps I could use instead, but the lamps are getting quite warm with these, they are 400W - but it is an option I am considering, another is a filter to reduce the colour temperature.
I have taken some self portraits where I used a mirror on the right side instead of the worklights, and it worked quite nice. Still have to soften up the light from the left, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem.
I was using a tripod for most of the photos and with a short wire-release. The camera doesn't make much noise, and I have found that it is a good opportunity to take some shots when the model doesn't expect it.


My personal favourite of the above is the first one.
Maybe it is because I was present, but she was sitting and turning her head slowly from side to side while looking up, and having an expression that said: "We will take some photos when I am good and ready, not before." - I loved that.

 

[tdmsu]

Lots of great advice here, and keep practicing!

Sometimes, if you have the time and location, taking subjects outside and shooting more candid-type portraits with a long lens works well. Here's an example I shot with a cheap 75-300 zoom during a group outing. They did not know I took it until later that day, but they loved it.

 

[Gamma]

Nice session.

The best thing you can do is shoot as many portraits as you can.
Discussion is fine - but portraiture is more about feel and visualization than it is about anything else.

Another main factor is the rapport between shooter and subject. Often - it takes time to get the mood 'there'.

Pix 1 & 5 heads nearly dead-center in the frame.
While this almost works for #1, it doesn't work in #5.

#2 - good shot

#3 & #5 - awkward framing - hard to make that work

#4 - good effort but 'the' moment wasn't there. Hard to cut off hands like that without it feeling abrupt.

You have a very difinite color shift on the background across the series - that's a bit distracting when the images are presented in a line like this.
The bluer ones have a better 'feel' - the greyer look is less attractive I think.

This is a very good effort - just keep shooting -

 

[Darkbulb]

Some 'golden rules' (some are meant to be broken but I've found these to be pretty solid when it comes to portraits):

1) Never crop through a joint (ankle/wrist, knee, etc) or through a hand
Most of your photos have that 'issue' and it does create a rather uncomfortable/unbalanced photo.

2) Focus on the EYES.
Same comment, I find the eyes to be very soft (can be scanning and lack of proper post-processing of course) - be sure to if anything to have the eyes in focus.

3) Watch out for dead space
The last one of your photos is a good example of that where the photo would need to be cropped at the top.

Good luck!

 

[shm]

Thanks gents.

Sucking up the comments like a sponge

 

[Lesmore]

You (OP) nailed it...shutter and ISO need work. Photos are not sharp. I would suggest experimenting with lighting.