An Introduction to Creative Portrait Techniques

Half the fun of shooting portraits is the veritable multitude of ways you can use photographic techniques and creative ideas to represent a person. This fun video will show you three such techniques that only require bare-minimum equipment and a subject.

Coming to you from Practical Photography, this video will show you three techniques for taking creative portraits: double exposures, using water drops on a window, and freelensing. While the first and last take a little trial and error before you're able to accurately predict how a shot will turn out, you can generally get a feel for each technique in just a few minutes of shooting, and the results are well worth the quick learning curve. An extra tip: if you're freelensing, try to use a wider portrait lens (notice how they use a 50mm lens) than you might normally; as you're playing with the lens, it can be a bit tough to keep your movements subtle enough to dial in the exact composition and blur you desire, and a shorter focal length will have a less severe change for each such movement, making it a bit easier to employ the technique. Give them all a try this weekend!

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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3 Comments

I just made a creative/ trendy photo tricks video as well! Would love to see what you think.
https://youtu.be/b8HAmMIBhB4

Hey Alex I don't mean to be an ass or anything, but lately it seems like you're just copying videos off from youtube and adding your own text and calling it a day. I miss the old days of Fstoppers when dani diamond or clay cook were writing, I miss the original content real tips from the real photographers on the working field not just "Copy & Paste" content. I don't mean to attack you personally that is not my intention, and im speaking in general about the active writers for this site. I am sure im not the only user that feels this way. I couldn't find another way to give this feedback but I consider this an important subject matter. as a community in this site I strongly believe in original content from the writer, other wise I would just subscribe directly to the creator of the video and skip this site all in general.

I hope this is heard and once again nothing personal, I say this with my best intentions on seeing this great community rise again to keep helping fellow photographers and artist on the industry.

thank you

Hector,

Fstoppers is a combination of both original and reposted content. If you're interested in originals, we post several a day: https://fstoppers.com/#originals