7 Minutes of Helpful Tips for Portrait Photography

Portrait photography is a challenging genre, as it takes a combination of technical savvy, creative vision, and the ability to work with people to create successful images. If you would like to improve your own portraits, check out this helpful video that features an experienced photographer giving a lot of great advice sure to help you make better photos. 

Coming to you from Manny Ortiz, this great video tutorial will show you a variety of helpful tips for improving your portraits. If I could give advice to any budding portrait photographer, it would be to work on your people skills more than you think you need to. Of course, understanding things like camera settings and lighting setups is important, but many newer photographers tend to spend more time on these because they are more easily codified and because they might be a bit socially anxious. Understanding how to make people comfortable in front of a camera and to bring out the best in them is the real secret of successful portraiture. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Ortiz. 

If you would like to continue learning about portraiture work, be sure to check out our range of tutorials on the topic.

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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5 Comments

No tips, really. You get a photo shoot while the photographer vocalizes (rambles about) his thoughts and directions to his model during the shoot.

I get what his intention is ( I think). This website exists heavily on content and user interaction with the content. There’s only so much quality content out there. Otherwise, you would have to create original content and to do that consistently is a full time job.

I couldn’t agree more about the need for a strong editor. Many can try to provide editorial leadership, but very few can do it well. It’s a specialized skill set that is definitely needed. If they advertised for an experienced editor this site could have the potential to be excellent.