A good portrait photo needs a compelling composition to complement the subject and complete the frame, but we tend to focus so heavily on our posing our subjects that it can be easy to overlook everything else. This excellent video tutorial will give you some helpful tips for composing portraits to create better-balanced images.
Coming to you from Julia Trotti, this great video tutorial will give you some advice for creating better portrait compositions using an 85mm lens (though the tips apply just as much to any portrait-length lens). With the extreme designs of many modern 85mm lenses and the modern obsession with bokeh, it is overwhelmingly common to simply shoot a portrait at a very wide aperture and turn the background into a wall of blur. And sure, that can be perfectly fine in a variety of scenarios, particularly if you do not have much control over the background, but it can also make your images a bit one-dimensional. Closing down your lens and including more of the environment can create more visual interest and allow you to tell more of a story about your subject. Check out the video above for a lot of great advice from Trotti.
