Tips to Become a Professional Portrait Photographer

Though most photographers upgrade to the best DSLR camera to have more control every time they shoot family portraits or group pictures, taking best shots of individuals is always a great challenge.

If you have been booked to shoot a family or you are shooting portraits of your friends & families, and whether you are having photo shoot in your studio or outside in a public place, the helpful tips below would be a great help to turn you into a professional portrait photographer.

1. When and How to Use Exposure Compensation

Metering system of your camera have an important role in photographing. In results in how much light ought to pass in the camera to have a perfect exposure. It’s very quick to learn, yet it’s not totally perfect. There is actually a problem with metering; it takes an average reading – either the whole frame or part of it, contingent on which metering mode your camera in – this reading is assumed as a midway between white and black.

This assumption comes out frequently, however a metering system can have a problem when a frame is controlled by areas of utmost brightness or darkness.

This problem can be easily solved with your camera’s Exposure Compensation controls. Start with dialing in up to +1 stop of positive Exposure Compensation to lighten up the subject’s faces. Check your shots, and if you think you need to lighten it more, just adjust it further.

2. Understanding Aperture

If you are taking portraits, it is recommended to set a wide aperture (around f/2.8-f/5.6) to take a depth surface of field, as a result the background behind the focus is perfectly blurred, making them stand out better.

Take in Aperture Priority mode to control depth of field; in this mode your DSLR will carefully set the shutter speed for a precise exposure.

3. Proper Setting of Shutter Speed

In setting up your cameras shutter speed, factor in your lens's focal length or else camera-shake (and blurry results) will be a problem.

In general photography rule, be certain that your camera’s shutter speed is higher that your actual focal length. For instance, at 200mm use a 1/250 sec shutter speed.

If you have use a wide-angle lens – such as 1/20sec with an 18mm focal length, you could get away with slower shutter speeds. If the focus is moving around rapidly, use the anti-shake system of your camera.

4. Upsurge your Camera’s ISO Setting

In photographing, one of the major problem is that – the subject move around a lot and alteration of their facial expressions. To avoid motion blurred photos, you must use a quick shutter speed.

5. Right Choice of Lens

A choice of lens has a huge effect on your portraits photographs. For taking portraits with photographic impact the recommended lens is the angle lens. Capturing from a low angle will make the subject bigger than they really are. This is the best technique for tricking the eye and altering the viewpoint of the subjects. But, be careful not get close, as you could possibly see distortion, which is not pleasing at all.