WINDOW PORTRAIT: PHOTOGRAPHY ACTIVITY
Photo prisoner by Jamie Goodsell (Click Image to See More From Jamie Goodsell)
This is a simple indoor mural with soothing window light from one side. You’ll need:
- A window that does not face the object (or it is cloudy outside)
- Daylight
- A peaceful model
Camera Setup
- Mode: Aperture Priority (Often shown as Av on the mode wheel)
- ISO: 100-400, as low as possible
- White Balance: Custom
- Aperture: As low as your lens will go. Lower f-numbers meant a incomparable opening which creates good hairy backgrounds.
Watch out for: The shiver speed. With a low-f-stop, you should not have low shiver speeds (below 1/60 second), but your ambient light and ISO environment will establish that. You might need to stabilise your camera if the shiver speed is revoke than 1/60 second.
White Balance Setup: Put the white paper in front of the subject. Take one picture of the paper, and make sure it is more grey than pristine white in the playback. Then go to your menu, and name Custom White Balance, and name that picture to use as a reference. What you are you do is revelation the camera to use the paper (which is grey/white) as the source of the clarification of “white”. It will then interpret all of the other colors to uncover them rightly in the images taken. This is regularly preferable to a canned white change setting, or the witless “Auto” setting.
The Pose: Position your theme back of the centerline of the window, so a little light falls on the “dark” side of their face. Have them spin their conduct to look somewhat out of the window.
Framing the Image: If you have a wizz lens, you can possibly be tighten and “zoomed out” or over divided and “zoomed in”. With people portraits, it’s customarily better to be back and wizz in, as it reduces the size of the nose and other facilities in the core of the face. Turn the camera to mural (tall) orientation, half-press, and look at the read-out. You should get a concentration blip where the camera thinks the concentration point should be. Move the core point to the closest eye to the camera, and half-press again. Once you get a concentration lock, pierce the camera to recompose the image. You’re you do this to means the tightest concentration point to be on the eye closest to the camera. If your camera has live view, omit it and use the viewfinder. Using the live perspective encourages bad camera land technique.
Take the Image: Play back and look for blown-out highlights in the subject’s face. Some cameras have the capability to uncover blown-out highlights as blinking white/black. If the credentials (out the window) has some, don’t worry, but you don’t want the face blown out. If you do have white highlights, use the Exposure Compensation to revoke by ½ stop to 1 full stop and reshoot.
Analyzing and Improving: Look at the image. Is it unprotected well? The window side of the face should be easily lit, and as it is confronting somewhat divided from the camera, is called the “short side”. This is an example of reduced lighting, where the reduced side gets the light and the extended side (facing the camera) gets the shadow. If the shade side is too dark, get a bit of contemplative material, be it aluminum foil or white cardboard, and reason it just off of the camera on the dim side.
"Her Winter Fairytale" prisoner by Olga Filonova (Click Image to See More From Olga Filonova)
It will simulate a bit of light from the window back to the shade side and will revoke the contrariety or shade level. Experiment with the theme seeking out the window (I call that the “dreamy shot”), and seeking at the lens (but still not true on).
Advanced Tricks: Pull this picture into your editor and try converting to black and white using the Channel Mixer tool. Choose 70% red, 15% blue and 15% green, and you’ll see a very good BW picture with the skin tones easily highlighted!
About the Author
John Huegel is a photographer in the Erie, Pennsylvania area who specializes in Seniors, Dance Studio, Families, Weddings and Events. He is active in many free and proffer activities in the Erie area. His work can be seen at http://jhphotomusic.com. He operates a blog for veteran photographers at http://newphotopro.blogspot.com.
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