10 Ways to Take Stunning Portraits

Being part of the 365 Days/threesixtyfive self-portrait a day for a year project, I found this article over on the DPS Blog today very interesting. Always looking for different ways to shoot myself, and I’m sure this will come in handy for portrait shooting as well!

How do you take Portraits that have the ‘Wow’ factor?

Today and tomorrow I want to talk about taking Portraits that are a little out of the box. You see it’s all very well and good to have a portrait that follows all the rules - but it hit me as I was surfing on Flickr today that often the most striking portraits are those that break all the rules.

I want to look at some ways to break out of the mold and take striking portraits by breaking (or at least bending) the rules and adding a little randomness into your portrait photography.

In a nutshell here are the ten points from the post today:

1. Alter your perspective
2. Play with eye contact
3. Break the rules of composition
4. Experiment with lighting
5. Move your subject out of their comfort zone
6. Shoot candidly
7. Introduce a prop
8. Focus upon one body part - get up close
9. Obscure part of your subject
10. Take a series of shots

My favorite technique, as you can see, is playing with and experimenting with light (photo above). I also find some of my best portraits are when shot candidly - as can be seen in the two photos below.

Be sure to head on over to the DPS Blog and read in detail 10 Ways to Take Stunning Portraits!

Tags: 365, DPS, People, portraits, self-portraits, threesixtyfive, Tips

Ghetto lighting…

I often receive comments and questions about low lighting in my self portrait shots. The Ghetto Lighting group over on Flickr defines ghetto lighting as:

If you use desklamps, your window, candles, whatever else I have not mentioned, then you my friend, use ghetto lighting.

I never really thought of this as “ghetto lighting” when I first picked up my Canon Digital Rebel XTi/400D back in November of last year, I was just using what I had on hand. Because of the season and the early sunset I really had no choice but to use what I could, and my favorite weapon of choice was, and still is, my IKEA Expressivo desk lamp. And it’s cheap!

Initially, the basic process I followed was to set up my shot, take a couple shots on the default setting to see what the camera “thought” I should be shooting at. Based on that, I’d crank up the shutter speed and/or the aperture setting until I received the desired level of dark/light that I was after. In other words, if the default settings took the shot at 1/8s at f/1.8, I’d adjust the shutter speed to 1/20s and go from there, increase to 1/30s if needed or decrease to 1/13s as desired.

Sure I could use Photoshop curves and levels, but I find more satisfaction in trying to do as much as I can in camera.

Tags: flickr, ghetto lighting, lamp, low light, self-portrait, tip

Jamie Livingston “Some Photos of That Day” site returns…

Looks like they got the site back up. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, check out my post from yesterday.

Check out Some Photos of That Day, might be a bit slow at times but you can just imagine the amount of traffic this site must be getting!

Tags: jamie livingston, photo a day, picture a day, polaroid, threesixtyfive

The Ultimate Threesixtyfiver?

Stumbled across a post titled He Took a Polaroid Every Day, Until the Day He Died on the mental_floss blog yesterday, and thought it was simply amazing! I’ve seen people drop out of the 365 Project left, right and center - heck, I consider it occasionally…

Yesterday I came across a slightly mysterious website — a collection of Polaroids, one per day, from March 31, 1979 through October 25, 1997. There’s no author listed, no contact info, and no other indication as to where these came from. So, naturally, I started looking through the photos. I was stunned by what I found.

That’s an incredible 6,697 Polaroids, dated in sequence for 18 years! Chris Higgens over at the mental_floss blog did some research and found out:

Finally my investigation turned up the photographer as Jamie Livingston, and he did indeed take a photo every day for eighteen years, until the day he died, using a Polaroid SX-70 camera. He called the project “Photo of the Day” and presumably planned to collect them at some point — had he lived. He died on October 25, 1997 — his 41st birthday.

Two of Livingston’s friends got a hold of his Polaroid collection and set up an exhibit and website.

After Livingston’s death, his friends Hugh Crawford and Betsy Reid put together a public exhibit and website using the photos and called it JAMIE LIVINGSTON. PHOTO OF THE DAY: 1979-1997, 6,697 Polaroids, dated in sequence. The physical exhibit opened in 2007 at the Bertelsmann Campus Center at Bard College (where Livingston started the series, as a student, way back when). The exhibit included rephotographs of every Polaroid and took up a 7 x 120 foot space.

More detailed information can be read over at Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn’s Jamie Livingston section. Some cool stuff there… the official site is down, apparently:

The Photo of That Day project is a work in progress, and the site was put up partly to help coordinate the effort to put together the show at Bard College. That’s why there is so little information on the site. The photos of the post-its with dates are placeholders for photos that were lost.

I’ll keep an eye on it, they’re hoping to have the site back up today at some point…

Tags: 365, betsy reid, chris higgens, exhibit, hugh crawford, jamie livingston, mental floss, mental_floss, only the blog knows brooklyn, otbkb, photo of the day, polaroid, polaroid of the day, threesixtyfive

Eye macro

The shot for my threesixtyfive project today consisted of a macro of my eye. I wanted to see how close I could really get so I used +1/+2/+4 Optex close-up filters stacked, and then attached my Raynox DCR-250 Super Macro Conversion Lens to the 50mm f/1.8 lens. Took a few shots, but got a couple more or less centered and detailed shots. Made some adjustments in Photoshop to achieve the final result.

Have had a few people asking about my process so here goes.

Shot this with my 50mm. Stacked +1, +2, and +4 close-up filters and used my Raynox DCR-250 Super Macro Conversion Lens on top of those. Took about 20 shots, 2 or 3 were this detailed, this one was closest to centered. Opened RAW file in Photoshop, adjusted white balance and increased clarity. In Photoshop cropped to about 90% so this is pretty close to how it was framed in camera. Duplicated the background layer, set it to screen mode. Reduced opacity of screen layer to 50%, and masked out everything except the iris and pupil. Added a B&W adjustment layer and reduced opacity to about 70%. Added a vignette based on the main background layer. I then added a curves adjustment layer, and then added a brightness/contrast adjustment layer above all the layers and adjusted the contrast a bit. And voila… so layer order from top to bottom was:

• Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer
• Curves layer
• Background layer set to screen mode with all but iris/pupil masked out
• Black & White adjustment layer
• Vignette layer
• Background layer (original image)

Tags: closeup, eye, macro, raynox, threesixtyfive