Five Helpful Tips for Better Portraits

Portraits take the confluence of technical aptitude, creativity, and the ability to work with people to be successful, and the lack of any one can derail the entire endeavor. This great video will give you five tips to improve your portraits, ranging from composition to interacting with the subject. 

Coming to you from Photography Pro, this helpful video discusses five useful tips for improving your portraits. Of the tips, the most salient for me has always been the importance of making the subject comfortable in front of the camera. It is easy to obsess over things like settings and technical ideas, but many of the best portrait photographers will tell you that the genre is 90% psychology and 10% technique (which is why I have learned so much from photographers like Peter Hurley). I certainly fell into the trap of being overly technical and even clinical in my approach when I first started, but once I learned the importance of creating an organic interaction instead of trying to engineer a successful image into existence, better portraits began to spring forth with far less effort. It is a skill well worth practicing. Check out the video above for more helpful tips. 

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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