How to Photograph People

Photographic Portrait

They say the most difficult photographic client is the "Mother of the Bride." I have photographed a number of weddings and can completely agree with the adage; however, my experience is that we are all very vain when the camera is pointed at us. Everyone wants to look good, and as photographers it is our job to try to help achieve that goal. Many people are camera shy, but more importantly, all of us seem to have our signature smile or pose that we use when the camera is turned on us. This makes our pictures sometimes seem boring or fake. A good photographer knows how to get honest expressions from people. No matter how savvy we are technically, it is our ability to deal with people that will make or break a photograph. It is also fine to take candid photographs of people, and in those situations you can rarely control lighting or anything else. There will be times, though, when you will be asked by people to take their pictures or photograph an event. This article will provide some tips to help you through the assignment.

Things You'll Need

• Camera
• Patience
• Strobe Light or Studio Lights

Instructions

1. 

   In the beginning of photography, most pictures of people were portraits taken to emulate paintings. Subjects were put into a neck brace to keep them from moving in order to get a non-blurry image. A portrait was always the same head and shoulders with a full face towards the camera. Thanks to photographers like Yousuf Karsh, portrait photography changed, and now there is no right or wrong way to take a picture of a person. This is a standard portrait taken in an atypical way. Most standard portraits are taken with a 75mm lens and include the head and shoulders. This was taken with a 50mm lens and up close to feature the eyes of the model and the symmetry of her face. There were three lights (main, key and highlight) using photographic umbrellas.

2. 

   It is always best if a picture tells a story. It should tell the story of a person like the photograph of Miles Davis with his trumpet or Picasso staring at his artwork, not at the camera. This is a photograph I took while on assignment for "Pittsburgh Magazine." I always thought that if I cropped the picture below the barber's hands and just had the hand and the boy's face, you would have thought he was being tortured. Try to make your picture tell a story. If your subject is a "barbecue king," take the picture with the grill, or if she is a "volleyball queen," take the picture at the net. Having a prop will sometimes help the subject relax and get into the right frame of mind.

3. 

   A good picture captures the person's mood and persona. This is a photograph I took of one of my students while on a photography field trip. It was a great, relaxing day and the calmness of the day and his mood are captured in addition to his desire to be cool. The outdoor setting and waterfall to the right punctuate the image.

4. 

   I worked with a talent agency and did portfolios for models for a while, and found male models to be less in touch with their facial expressions. Female models seemed to have a broader range of facial expressions. This model just kept giving me a business smile, yet I wanted his portfolio to have more depth. On this shot I told him to "look like a gangster"-and this is what I got-which was a lot different than most of the rest. The trick is to find out what role people want to play and then direct them to show it to you.

5. 

   Getting people to relax in front of the camera is the hard part. Kids are easy. They are used to being in front of the camera from an early age and haven't had time to become so tense. You can't fool an adult with a spinning bow tie, but it will work great on a 2-year-old. All of us develop a standard way we pose for the camera. We have a standard smile and stance. This can make us look phony because it is so practiced, it doesn't always seem natural. This model could not get out of flashing her smile. She has a beautiful smile and it has worked for her since she was 2 years old; however, talent agents want to see different expressions and stances from models. In order to extract different expressions, I would trick her by using a long cable release and constantly talking to her. The cable release lets me wander around the studio so the person never knows when the flash is coming. Using this technique I was able to get different "looks" from the model and help her build a better portfolio.

Tips & Warnings

• Start with three lights: main light, fill light and key light.

• Experiment with studio lights or strobe lights on still life images to gain experience with lighting.

• Learn the difference between Broad Lighting, Short Lighting, Rembrandt Lighting and other lighting schemes.

Resources

• Karsh
• Mary Ellen Mark