This is go to be a pretty good area here I got the lens cap on
great keep that there perfect okay what we're going to do is we're going to look
at portraiture and specifically we're going to be looking at portraiture
first of all with natural light we've got this beautiful Sun setting down
behind and then we're going to look at portraiture with some flashlights fill
in flash now one of the things I wanted to talk about are what I consider the
five key things for good portraiture first of all it's communication you need
to be able to communicate with your model or your subject let them know what
you need and build a good rapport with them so that they feel comfortable when
you're photographing them second thing is your choice of lens your choice of
lens is really important for portraiture very very important now I'm using an 85
millimeter lens here which is a perfect focal length on the full-frame 35mm
format gives a really nice perspective it's a very flattering lens for
portraiture third thing is aperture the choice of aperture is imperative now I
love to use large aperture lenses for portraiture in this case this lens is a
1.2 but any lens from 1.8 or above would be great for portraiture and I'm going
to probably be shooting with apertures from 1.2 to about 2.8 so that I can
control the depth of field just to around the model and then keep some of
these wooden posts slightly out of focus and the blades of grass slightly out of
focus so that's communication choice of lens choice of aperture the fourth thing
that we need is lighting now one of the myths that you hear in photography is
how the photographer should have the Sun behind him so the light is illuminating
the subject well that's complete nonsense okay the best lighting is
shooting into the light now you can see what's happening here on our model Emma
the light is coming from behind and it's illuminating the hair really really
nicely giving this lovely backlit effect onto the hair so that's the best way to
shoot into the light now the problem when you're shooting
into the light is that you're going to have
the shadow side that requires filling in with light and what we're going to do to
fill in the light is I've got our assistant Fabian here with a standard
lastolite round disc reflector and with the silver side of the reflector I can
just gradually bounce a little bit of light reflecting that light from the Sun
back in onto the models face you're going to be careful how harsh you don't
want it too harsh but you can see just a subtle amount can work quite nicely now
it's good to have an extra pair of hands and our assistant Fabian is going to be
controlling that reflector and then the fifth and final thing is the environment
and you can see here we've chosen a really nice location so think about the
location and what your backdrop is going to be so we're going to use these wooden
posts to make part of our picture the blades of grass and the backlight Sun
and then we've got this lovely Bank of grass going off into the distance which
is going to make for a really lovely soft background with that shallow depth
of field so I'm going to start shooting few pictures Fabian is going to control
the reflector and then hopefully Emma will give us a few nice poses and we
should get some really nice portraits now look at camera this time that's it
good a little bit of smile again that's it good may even help if you actually go
past it that way and just bring it back in to about there that's good excellent
that's a nice sexy pose that's great we just move my position here good lovely
keep that there a little bit more of a smile for me that's it great perfect
okay so we can see that the reflector that Fabian is putting in on the shop is
working really nicely we're just getting that little bit of fill light which is
filling in the shadow side of my picture and I'm shooting into the Sun which is
the best way to do it