No doubt, portrait photography takes the confluence of a lot of technical skills and creative ideas to be successful, and there are a lot of common mistakes we all make at one time or another. This excellent video details three common portrait photography mistakes and how you can avoid or fix them.
Coming to you from Eli Infante, this awesome video discusses three portrait photography mistakes that can hold you back and how you can fix them. Personally, one thing that took me a long time to stop doing was shooting everything at an ultra-wide aperture. No doubt, shallow depth of field portraits are popular for good reason, and they can be a particularly useful way to isolate your subject when you do not have control over the background. That being said, that sort of look can grow monotonous after a while, and it also means you are missing out on many creative opportunities, as more complex and nuanced shots in which your subject interacts with the surrounding environment can be more visually interesting and compelling. Do not be afraid to use a narrower aperture and explore more complex compositions. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Infante.
I really wish more photographers weren’t so obsessed with shooting wide open all the time and obsessing over ‘creamy backgrounds’. Often it feels very lazy and certainly gets quite tedious when you see it for the millionth time. Stopping down forces you to really work on your framing, composition and finding interesting backdrops.