Your Best Portraits

Girl from Ipanema
As I was walking through a crowd at the beach, I saw a beautiful woman sitting on the sand laughing with her friend. I immediately took several shots, and this one was the one I chose to edit. The profile pose with her large sunhat and thick dark hair pulled back almost looked staged. But I find candid portraits like this with a natural looking expression work best for me. If she were asked to pose, I doubt the result would be half as successful. I cropped tight intentionally to highlight her face and smile and darkened the background for further effect. I did the usual portrait editing although her skin was close to perfect so that was a benefit. I brought out the glow in her jewelry in editing as I felt that helped with the glamour look. I shot this with my Canon 70-200 L lens, (200 mm, 1/1000 s, F 7.1 iso 100) a favorite of mine especially for this genre. When I am shooting at populated tourist areas where I'm moving quickly, I have all my settings in place for the light which is usually sunny in the southwest, and I have trained myself to move fast, not worry if I'll be interrupted by someone, be bold, and if or when the subject sees me, I wave and smile and say thank you and give a nice and sincere compliment. If they seem interested, I ask if they would like to see it, usually they do and are pleased. I may even give them my card with an email and tell them if they'd like me to send them the photo, to email me. I've done this for years and only once had an unpleasant experience with a hostile woman. I ended quickly and moved on, although in public places it is legal to take photos of anyone, but I would just respect the person's wishes.