hi guys welcome or welcome back thanks so much for joining me today we are in
the woods and we're going to go through 10 ways that you can instantly improve your portraits
so guys basically i made three fatal errors today fatal error number one was i trusted three weather
forecasts and they all were wrong uh error number two is that i didn't bring any waterproof bottoms
that's a fatal error and error number three is that i haven't put waterproof mascara on so at
the end of this video we might look a lot worse than we do right now but we're going to go through
how to make some beautiful pictures by correcting some small mistakes that i see all of the time
so as always this is my opinion but let's go to the first location and get started
by the way if you haven't already press the subscribe button hit the bell icon
because basically that will enrich your life and it helps me so that's great
morning it's v dark v dark the first mistake that i want to go through basically uh
let's go and make it let's go make this mistake so we're in this woodland this is one of my favorite
woods to go to this is where i had my wedding pictures taken and it's beautiful so we've got
alfie with us who is basically just gonna help us out because he's good and will behave perfectly
so what we'll do is we will go ahead and set him up in a situation i've seen one
so the first mistake that I want to run through basically i'm going to recreate it
and then i'm going to correct it so we'll move alfie obviously perfectly behaved model
on to our little position steady baby hop up ready waiting fronts down down
so i see loads of people doing this look oh it's a cute dog what a beautiful photograph and yes it
is a beautiful photograph but there's a massive tree coming out of his head wait so all you would
need to do is move slightly to one side or the other to get a much cleaner background now i've
put myself right next to a big massive tree but if this massive tree wasn't there waiting ready
and get a much better photograph with no tree coming out of his head okay
super super simple trick guys just look at what's behind the dog that's it really that's all there
is to it let's go to problem number two so you've got alf don't you dare go in that big muddy puddle
so we've got this beautiful long straight track in front of us so we might as well do a classic
portrait which would be super nice so i'm going to choose this way as the background so what i'm
going to do is i'm going to put out into a down in the middle-ish um and we'll set up problem number
two ready bud lie down lie down good wait okay so this is the point where i'm gonna get really wet
and really muddy we're dog photographers so let's get owie my knees let's get a good shot of our dog
so we sat here and we're like all good alf ready where's ball so there's some gunshots going off
down so it's a bit worrying for him good boy ready so i'm moving my focus point because i
can't not sorry guys so we're taking a shot and that's great but wait look what happens
if you end up here going to have to zoom out a touch down ready where's ball where's ball
good good wowie so having some of this foreground in nice and blurry we've got the
background in nice and blurry lie down good boy and we've got him slap bang in
the middle so getting down lower is so much better than being higher up okay good boy
got brambles going on alfie out the way buddy we've got some fallen
stuff on here we'll just move the things that have fallen onto it
i'm wondering can anybody guess what we're pointing out here put our gloves on right
uh i don't have your ball balls getting eaten by the brambles let's take a picture
oh look cute shot cute shot we're about 135mm nice photograph but
what would happen if we went closer
so this uses the principles in the video about relative distances to create beautiful backgrounds
so yes it is a closer shot but the background looks a lot better okay good boy
and i did it
i quite like these little heather bushes which have all died but we'll have to come back when
they are not dead because that would be better we're going to put alf within these bushes and
then look at the best distances for space around the subject so we'll put him somewhere in a gap
so if we're at 135 mm this far away there is nowhere near enough space around him to make a
nice photograph it's just not going to happen that is too close so what we can do is if we move back
not too far just enough to make sure that we can get
a good composition a little bit more let's zoom out touch
just take one safe shot you know i know i've got that bush there so i'm gonna move slightly to the left
get down so the camera is really really low it's on the floor and we're just peeking through making
sure there's nothing covering his eyes i'm okay with the bit over his nose wait i'm gonna flatten
it and we're just creating waiting a great shot ready ready beautiful let me go back into 135
beautiful focal length 135 and okay good boy so if we have a look
at those pictures it could of done with a bit more space above not gonna lie it's hard to see
when you're on the back of this um but those are pretty beautiful photographs and when you compare
those with space around the ears space around the paws space around the dog allowing him to breathe
when you compare them with the ones that we set up that were too tight it's massively
massively different so they're pretty adorable i'm going to shoot here more often i think beautiful
okay we're gonna do
all about composition of your dog like posing of the dog so let's set alf up in this nice
open grassland environment okay so there's some long bits which are probably going to screw us up
but if alfie waits there wait grass right in front of his eye but we'll still be able to illustrate
so if we focus on him if you look at the composition of him side on that grass is right in front of
his face so if you see him side on it's not a bad shot we're nice and low down we're at eye level or
below which is super important eye level or below and it's a nice shot but the composition of it's
really difficult because he's facing completely to the side and it would be even worse if he's
looking that way so what you can either do is zoom out so you've got a bigger shot but then you lose
your narrow depth of field your blurred background remember the last video that we did on this
subject so what you can do is just alter the stand of the dog you should be able to see with him stood
straight on it's a better overall composition at the exact same focal length that we were at before
so the only thing that's changed is we've altered the angle that he was stood and now
the composition works much better without having to go ahead and zoom out so we're at 135 now
if we were out now it looks too big there's too much space around the subject
and therefore that comes back to getting closer or zooming in so it's a good space okay good boy
okay so next thing i'm going to do let's set alfie up as people set up their dogs for shots alfie come
wait i'm setting alfie up here let's go solid 135 again
you know what let's do why not let's do portrait although it's really hard for me to hold on this
super off balance waiting
ready wait now that background looks not great wait so if we bring alf forward
to keeping similar distance away from the dog but we've moved him off the background
i mean not gonna lie his tails not helping us here today everybody but you should be able to see
a huge difference in the background so that's next tip move your subject away from the background the
next thing that we're going to do is we're going to look at basically what you can do in camera to
make the shot easier to work with afterwards so alfredo we're going to put him in the bush alf ready
can we get in this is what um the vast majority of people do okay so the focus point is pretty much
in the middle we focus when we take the shot so we have to be a little bit further away because
the focus points in the middle i think that's the middle and it means that the composition
we've got to do lots of cropping and it's harder to work with now what if we just moved our focus
point and composed in camera for a nice rule of thirds shape there getting down nice and low
and what if we just shot it basically as it was going to be it's a little tight
and the difference is that you won't really have to crop good boy okay good lad
let's look at which focus mode we want to be using for portraits so if we put alf down on this
loggy thing fronts down lie down lie down good wait so if we put alf on that log and get into a
position so we're nice and low down this is with single point focus right so you can pick what
you're focusing on waiting what if we weren't using single point what if we were using wide
and therefore the camera picks what to focus on do you see so those lines those green
boxes are what it's focusing on and it will pick now this has got animal eye detection
so it should pick his eye which is great but it wouldn't always work that way so if we change that
to people it shouldn't probably pick him up and you see the problem of using the wide and going
hey camera choose what we're focusing on today because this is not focusing on him at all so it's
going oh there's a face but again it's picking up the log so if we switch our put that back
on to help us out and switch our focus point to a single point on the small one on the sony cameras
then we can just move that little bracket around pick our focus point and shoot okay
good lad okay so we might as well just carry on with the next one which basically you see loads
of people find amazing objects in the environment such as logs and trees and things like that and
they put their dogs on them in like a down or put their front feet up and what that will do
basically is give you kind of like a frontal view so if we set that up as it might happen here
fronts good down wait so this is how many people would do they go okay
we've got this adorable dog obviously in an adorable location let's find a gap in these
branches here and we're gonna shoot down good he looks like he's got an extra long leg
so 200mm we're gonna do both of these at so yeah it's kind of cute it's cute right so back
good that's better so it's cute i'm not saying it's not guys it's very adorable but if you use the
line of the log it will help you out a lot more so let's alter the positioning and reshoot ready
so having him at the other end lie down ready where's where's ball where's ball down ok down
good wow ready steady hide hide hide hide beautiful okay wow good boy
so what we're gonna do now basically is we're gonna shoot in both directions on here because
we're gonna do a nice portrait of alfie i'm gonna show you the difference that it makes when you
have a super bright background versus one that is a little bit more controlled when you're working
in a woodland environment so we'll set alf up at the wrong side which isn't wrong it's just
not as good in my opinion and then we'll set up for the right side so alfredo may i borrow you of
course i can of course you can go yeah come here go sit uh what should we do should we do a flat
down yeah let's do flat down down good boy wait so super bright background guys you can see this
and the picture's fine like it's not bad it's just really bright background so it means for him
to stand out it's gonna be quite difficult it's not super bright today because it's not a nice
day today but it's still quite distracting let's switch him around the other way and see what it looks
like do you guys see the massive difference that having the bright versus the darker background has
on an image it's insane look at my legs
so guys that should be everything i think i think that's everything on my little list of things i
wanted to go through today we've got a guy with a dog walking towards us so alfie come here
i hope this video has been helpful for you i hope it gives you some
more ideas and more things that you can try so as a quick run through i'm just
going to put on the screen right now all of those different tips
and i want you guys to go and practice and try tag me in stuff on instagram because that would
be great and if you haven't already please do press the subscribe button and hit the bell icon
the bell icon will help you out it'll give you a notification every single time i upload a video
i upload every week and sometimes more than that if i feel like it we're gonna get out the way of
this guy now he's walking towards us and we'll see you all again really really really soon