Being a master of your craft sometimes means taking exciting and memorable portraits in not-so-interesting locations and circumstances. Here are six simple tricks to help make your portraits more creative while removing distracting elements and creating more engagement.
Coming to you from Pye Jirsa of SLR Lounge and Adorama is a brand new video breaking down a series of portraits that go from good to great with a little bit of know-how and some small foresight in your imagery. Pye does a great job of explaining his mindset behind the camera, as well as when to look at a scene and realize you can develop a much more emotional image with very few additional tools or none at all. The most invaluable part of breaking down circumstances like these is having the clarity to see how your subject will be viewed with location elements and timing that you can and can’t control.
One important way I look at portraits is how the background will look or interact with my subject before they move in front of my camera. If I have an issue with the lighting or the elements in the background of an image, I’ll try to use a longer focal length or raise or lower my camera height to find the angle that will enable my background to work for my subject rather than work against them.
After watching the video, were there any tricks or techniques that you already do regularly in your work, or are these tips new to you? Let us know any techniques you use in your work, and share those images below with an explanation of what you did in your image.
