- Natural light & portrait photography
Portraits are a little out of the box. You see it’s all very well and good to have a portrait that follows all the rules – but it hit me as I was surfing on social media today that often the most striking portraits are those that break all the rules. I want to look at some ways to break out of the mold and take striking portraits by breaking (or at least bending) the rules and adding a little randomness into your portrait photography. I’ll share ten of these tips:
- Experiment with lighting.
Move Your Subject Out of their Comfort Zone
- Shoot candidly
- Break the rule of composition
- Play with eye contact (looking off camera/ looking within the frame)
- Alter your perspective
- Introduce a prop
- Focus upon a body part - Get close up
- Take series of shots
Kids photography
I thoroughly enjoy photographing children and have had the opportunity to do quite a bit of it lately after many of our friends have had babies.
Probably the most important tip I’ve learned in photographing them is to get on their level. So many of my friends show me photos of their kids which are taken from 4 or so feet above the child which does nothing but dwarf them and make them look almost toy-like.
Getting on your hands and knees or crouching down before you take a shot of a child takes you into their world and helps you to engage with them through the images you take.
Photographing Babies
Babies are particularly difficult to photograph because they are so immobile. I find that one of the best ways to get good shots of them is to put them on a baby rug and too literally lie down next to them with your camera right on the floor. In this way you’re looking directly into their big beautiful eyes and it puts the viewer of the photo in the unique perspective of an eye to eye place. If the child has the ability to lift its head the effects can be amazing as you almost find yourself looking UP into their eyes.
Photographing Older Children
I particularly find that with older children the best time to photograph them is when they are doing something that they enjoy. Go to the park with them and their parents, visit their house when they are painting pictures, get them to take you on a tour of their room or take them out to play their favorite sport.
While they are doing their activity, hover around (at their level) and take plenty of shots. Also include shots with them and their parents and keep an eye open for those candid moments when they fall over, do funny expressions or ham it up for the camera.
Food photography:
Everyone loves food and some of them love clicking pictures of their food. Some of tips to take mouth watering shots of food:
- Experiment With Different Heights
- Consistent Portfolio
- Learning to Balance Depth of Field and Shutter Speed
- Exporting, Uploading, Sharing
- Knowing How To Frame Your Shot
Still life photography
Still life is a unique genre of photography. One thing that makes it so special is that often the subjects aren’t very interesting. They’re just ordinary objects that you normally wouldn’t pay much attention to. That means that to be successful at still life photography, you need to find ways to make your photos interesting. That also means it’s a great style of photography for learning new skills. By experimenting with different arrangements, lighting, and compositions, still life photographers can breathe life into their subjects.
Product photography
Consumers seek time-saving shortcuts all the time, and their attention naturally gravitates to the quickest way to gather information: images.
Product images not only testify to the quality of your product, but also serve as windows into your ecommerce store, creating 2 very important things:
- Transparency
- Trust
Images shape their first impression, creating a tipping point as to whether they will continue browsing and eventually make a purchase.
Here, you could have take images that:
- Engage
- Convert
- Boost the lifetime value of your customers.
Water/ splash photography
How exciting is it to freeze things in action? High-speed photography and water make the perfect recipe to get stunning images – and creating them is incredibly fun and easy too! Here are some tips for doing your own water splash photography.
- Setup
- Gears
- Focusing
- Freezing the water splash
- Setting up the flash and camera
- Use subjects with vivid color, this way you will have good separation of the subject from the black background and the white/blueish splash. This makes your pictures really pop.
- If you photograph small subjects, try to use a minimum of 6-10 pieces at once.
- Try to combine subjects of different sizes, colors, and shapes.
- The heavier the subject, the faster it will fall, making it harder to capture at the right moment. So take that into consideration.
- To get larger splashes, use subjects with a larger surface area, or let them fall from a higher position.
- Wash the fruits and vegetables well before you use them, this way you can keep the water cleaner for a longer period of time.
- If the water starts becoming dirty, change it. It’s pretty unpleasant as the tank is heavy and you’ll have to do that a couple of times. But the good news is that by doing so, you’ll have to work less in the post-processing phase, while also getting sharper, more cleaner images.
- Frequently clean the front glass of the tank to get rid of the water drops that tend to accumulate on it.
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