I have been trying to improve my portrait photography lately and have really thought about where and how I am taking photos. Take these 2 below for example how would you improve them *dons aspestos jacket*

Really like the second pic, but not what I’d call “portraits”.
Portraits are all about the face. Especially the eyes.
(maybe shout “oi!” so they look up 😉 )

Like this Dez? I though the chisel really added to the photo on the first one…

They are not really portraits though are they? They look like reportage images where you haven’t engaged with the subject to take their ‘portrait’ but just hung around in the background waiting for an opportune moment.

I disagree that portraits are always all about the face and eyes, a sculptor’s hands say a lot for example. Body language is a powerful thing. Choose which focal aspect and focus on that, and the lighting.

I find available light portraiture to be really hit and miss, and will take 30 bad shots for one good one.

Focus on the eyes
You don’t actually need the top of the head. Just google for portraint pics, many chop the top off

For example, take that last pic and select just the guy’s face, cut alittle bit off the top of his cap and run to just below his chin. Chop that out and paste as a new image then you got a lovely pic

Compositions not great, use a really shallow depth of field to focus on the subject (be that the eyes, the hands or whatever). Use a long lens and stand further away to forshorten the images. Look at the lighting – those shots have natural light but the faces are in shade – if you get them with some light dappling on the faces they will look more interesting. You have lots of unnecessary distractions in the shots such as parts of people cropped off, out of focus twigs in the foreground (not always a problem, but the odd bit looks distracting).

EG – this uses a very short depth of field and focuses on the action

This shows how natural light can be your friend, the composition is nice, again depth of field helps focus the viewers’ attention

johndoh they’re great really like the printer

Both could be tighter cropped and there is too much clutter in the background that looks out of place (the blue rope, camp chairs, purple jacket). The things we should be focussing on, the man and his chain saw, are a bit lost in the first composition

Johndoh’s second is a good example. Just the print machine and the guy focussing on it

No idea if this will work…

Pah – no idea how to share an image in Dropbox

For me, a portrait has to have a stillness about it. Then take everything away that distracts from the personality, even colour when it helps.

Johndoh’s edit

Yeah that’s it – very quickly done, focused on him, offset the image so he doesn’t sit too centrally, blurred some of the foreground/background.

I probably would’ve used a clone tool to get rid of the stuff on his right shoulder too.

For me, a portrait has to have a stillness about it.

For me the eyes or the point of interest have to be nice and sharp.

Me too, but the autofocus insisted on the tip of his nose and the front wisps of hair! By the time I’d zoomed in to check on the rear screen, the girls had come back and we were off, so he didn’t sit still the rest of the day. It was the colours of light coming from video game displays at the Bradford Media Museum that made me take the shot in the first place, odd that it was then better without colour.

Playing around and learning the focal field settings on your camera would probably help, here’s a rough photoshoped version of what I mean, but you could do this kinda thing on camera, I think? (I don’t really do photography mind).

you also want to be taking every photo into photoshop and learning some basic level and colour correction techniques.

Yeah – you clearly spent more time on it that I did – that looks much better than my 10 second ninja edit 🙂

aye, about 15 seconds! 😆

but the autofocus insisted

Does the camera have manual focus?