Category: Tutorials
6 Tips for Better Portrait Photos
When you take out your camera to take portraits, how do you do it so that you will have them with wow factor? Do you adhere to the rules usually known as standard with portrait photography? Don’t you find your portraits boring and monotonous? If so, why not break some rules and think out of the box when snapping those moments away? For all you know, capturing moments without following the rules may come out with pictures that are not only beautiful but striking too? Want to try it? Then get those rules out for the meantime and check the following helpful tips to get those portrait photos that you so wanted for a long time.
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Altering your Perspective: Traditional rules say that you take pictures pointing your camera at an eye level of your subject while the latter looks at the lens to convey communication. But now, you can achieve better photos if you can change that perspective and try adding some randomness by getting high up the ground then shooting down or going close to the ground then shooting up. Either way, it will create an angle that will produce an interest to your subject.
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Playing with Eye Contact: A couple of random ways to play with an eye contact are available for you. Either you make the subject look off the camera or look within the portrait’s frame. The first one can create a sense of candidness as well as can elicit interest and intrigue as people will wonder where the subject is looking at. It is particularly true when there is a sort of emotion displayed by the subject in their eyes, whether laughing, sad, surprised, or amused. Be sure to capture though the subject’s eyes even while they’re off the lens. If the subject is looking within the frame, say at an object, it can create a story where a relationship between the subject and the object is established drawing out interest from the viewer.
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Playing with Lighting: Using lights in randomness is a great way to play up with your portrait photography. In fact, limitless possibilities can be created when you know how to play up with the light against your subject. Silhouetting, backlighting, and side-lighting are some of the techniques to create drama or hide some features of the subject.
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Moving the Subject Out of Comfort Zone: Thinking out of the box when taking photos of your subject includes removing them out of their comfort zone. It means that you have to make your subject act random things while you are taking shots at them. You can create special and exciting and not awkward, dull, or stiff portraits from out of "silly" shots.
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Using Props: Props can add drama and flair to the shots. Use random things for the props, where they can serve as points of interest. Just remember to not take away the spotlight from your primary subject.
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Shooting Candidly: Candid shots are, of course, different from, posed shots. The former can add refreshing touch to the portrait while posed shots can sometimes be stiff and plain. Photograph your subjects while they were busy doing things. Shoot continuously or set your camera to a burst so that it continues to click capturing different angles of subject, which you can later on choose your best work from.
There are many different techniques that you can use to produce stunning shots. While it is good to follow rules if you are afraid to getting mistakes, but "out of the box" thinking can be so much fun and useful for portrait photography.
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Digital Tutorial: Traditional Elements into Digital Scrapbook Projects
This past week I began de-cluttering our house in preparation for moving at the end of this month. While going through boxes I came across a project my daughter created while in Kindergarten twelve years ago. It was looking a little worn considering its been in a box for all these years. I decided it needed to be displayed instead of hidden away. So I stopped all that I was doing and started making a scrap page.
Here is the end result:
Now I will explain how you can make this project with your children.
First you obviously need the hand print. So grab some paint and a piece of paper. Cover your child’s left hand with the paint and then press hand onto the paper. You will need to let the hand print dry thoroughly before scanning into the computer.
Once you have scanned in your hand print you will need to put it on a transparent background. Or in my case, I need to remove the background from the original art project. I will use Photoshop Elements to complete this process.
Open the image in Photoshop. Using the Quick Selection Tool, select the area around the hand print.
Whenever you make a selection in Photoshop, you should make sure it is accurate before moving on to the next step. To do this we will use the Refine Edge tool. To get to the Refine Edge Tool, click Select from the Navigation Tool Bar and then scroll down to Refine Edge. A new box will pop up. I like to click on the Custom Overlay Color (red icon) which turns the area not selected red. This allows me to easily see which area I have selected and which area is not selected. Once I am finished making changes (if any) click OK.
Once you are happy with your selection you will want to save it. To do this, click on Select from the Navigation Tool Bar and then scroll down to Save Selection. Give your selection a name and then save it. The point of this step is so that if you ever need to modify the selection you can do so easily within the PSD file or in my case should you computer sometimes crash, you won’t have to make the selection again.
Now in my situation, I had scanned in an original art work project and I have a black background that I do not want. To remove the background I am going to invert my selection so that I can easily delete the unwanted background. To invert the selection, click on Select and then scroll down to Inverse. This will place the marching ants around the background. Now press Delete on your keyboard. And in a flash you have a transparent background.
Looking at my project now, I see that I have a lot of wasted background space. To clean up the space I am going to move the hand print to the upper left corner and crop out the unwanted background using the Crop Tool in Photoshop.
That’s better. All I see now is my hand print. Time to save the image. You will want to save the image as a PNG file because you want to have a transparent background. If you were to save this as a JPG, you would have a white background which will not work for digital scrapbooking and overlaying objects on different backgrounds. To save this hand print as a PNG file, click on File and then scroll down to Save As. Choose the location and name to save this file in. Make sure you selection PNG file as the type from the drop down menu.
You now have a handprint that you can use for digital scrapbooking. You can continue to use Photoshop for digital scrapbooking or whatever software program you generally use. Personally, I do most of my digital scrapbooking with Heritage Makers Studio 3.0. If you would like to give Heritage Makers Studio a try, send me an email and I will set you up with a Free basic account. And during this month of February I will also give you a complimentary 12×12 scrap page so that you can complete this project as my way of saying thank you.
If you are already a Heritage Maker, click here to get this template: Left to Right Template
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Digital Tutorial: How to get Torn Pages in Adobe Photoshop Elements
This week has not been going well. At. All! So instead of crawling under a rock I turn to my creative side to calm the raging sea inside.
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Tuesday’s Digital Tutorial: Digital Backgrounds
Not happy with the background in your photograph? Swap it out for a new one. And I will show you how in today’s Digital Tutorial. There are a few things you need to know and do in order for this to be successful.
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How To Mask with Text in Photoshop Elements
Welcome back to another digital tutorial. While browsing through a scrapbook magazine this weekend, I learned a cool way to apply text masks to photographs in Adobe Photoshop Elements. I thought it was pretty cool and thought you might enjoy it as well.
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