Adding spontaneity to make great portraits

One way to make family portraits feel more real is to keep shooting well after the posed image you set up.

I've talked about it before, but one of the reasons why shooting digitally is so great is that you don't have film and processing costs. All you have is a memory card, which can be reformatted and reused. So after you have shot the picture of your favorite people in a pretty location, keep shooting when they sit down and relax.

In this example, I sat next to my friend Paul and his son Parker, and actually held the camera down low near the ground. I used a zoom lens set at 35mm, set the auto-focus on a wide spread pattern covering all the focus points and just clicked away while they played. Because both of them were focused on enjoying their moment together, the images were much more relaxed, spontaneous and intimate.

Using color to make great portraits

It's always fun to shoot portraits, and at the same time you want to make one that is unique. So in sizing up the opportunity, besides looking at the features of the person you are shooting, try to take other things into account to make the image special.

In this case, I certainly wanted to make an image of Tasha's warm, smiling face. But where to place her? When I looked around, I found this wonderful melon colored wall that worked well as a background. Certainly it was nice because it was a simple background and allowed the eye to focus on her face and not be distracted by other elements like texture or pattern. But the real key is that the wall is the complimentary color to the aqua dress she was wearing, so it makes the whole image pop.

So when you are shooting a portrait, look for color to help you make an image that is unique.

Great fall photographs

Fall is one of the most exciting times to be out shooting landscape images because of the spectacular color found in the trees dotting the hillsides. Here's one tip for getting a great photograph when you get out there.

When you are surveying the opportunities while you are hiking or driving, look for situations where the trees are backlit. That's because the added contrast of the leaves being lit from behind will make them more luminous, add more depth, and makes the color pop off the page. Just look at this example to see what I mean.

WHAT TO PACK FOR A PHOTO TRIP, PART II

Visiting in more detail the overview article I wrote on what to pack for a photo trip, I want to cover the specifics group by group. So in this article, I'm going to talk about the items in the camera gear group, which are:

1-Camera
2-Camera manual.
3-Wide angle zoom lens (minimum 24-70, possibly 14-35 as well)
4-Telephoto lens 70-200mm
5-Lens extender 1.4X
6-Polarizing filter
7-Graduated neutral density filter
8-Filter holder
9-Lens cleaning solutions (bulb brush, lens cleaning tissue or microfiber cloth, and fluid)
10-Tripod and cable release (optional)
11-Portable flash (some cameras have these built in)

In this brief article, I want to talk about the value of taking the camera manual on location.

These new digital cameras are computers, and they have tremendous capabilities. Even for someone who has been in the business for years, I sometimes find it a bit overwhelming when I get a new camera. So my suggestion is to be sure to take your manual along until you know the camera functions inside and out.

It's a bit like loading film onto darkroom spools, or loading 4x5 film into holders in the dark. You want to be able to do things without even thinking about them. I would suggest practicing the possible scenarios you might be faced with before you go out to shoot.

Make sure you understand how to set the camera to shutter priority mode, aperture priority mode, change the metering mode, change the auto focus points in the viewfinder, add exposure compensation, how to playback images and how to zoom in on them to check focus and composition. And bring the manual along in case you forget these things, or need access to a more obscure function.

Hesitating because you do not know how to make the camera do something will result in missed images. Avoid the frustration, and carry your manual.

The Biggest Filter

Often, I when I am teaching a workshop and ask why people are attending, someone will say “I take pictures, but I don’t seem to get in an image what I had in my mind at the time I did the shoot.”

This person is not alone in their lament. The reality is that the brain does an amazing job of filtering what we see, and thus what we end up with may not match the vision we had when we were attracted to a situation. True, there are other things that influence the image you end up with, such as cropping, angle of view, and choice of lens, just to mention a few.
But one of the biggest factors is how our brain edits the external and forces it into the box our desires have created for the fulfillment of our photographic ideals, whatever they may be.

I’m amazed at how often I drive by a location, and see a wonderful opportunity, only to return and find out there were power lines disrupting the clean lines of a building. Or a fire hydrant marring the simple lines of a street scene.

In this situation, I was driving on a one way street that had three lanes of traffic, and I was in the far left lane. I noticed a building on the right side of the street that had several fruit trees in bloom, and the contrast of the pink flowers against the rust colored exterior wall was striking. I decided I would return the next day when I could make some time to spend shooting.

On my return, I parked my car on a side street, turned the corner and walked alongside the scene I was so enamored with. To my dismay, there were stakes holding the trees in place, so I could not shoot from the top to the bottom of the tree. There was even a utility box next to one of the trees.



This is the point at which I remind myself of the big brain filter I carry around with me, and laugh at myself. And it is also the time where I think about what it was that brought me to this place to photograph in the first place, and see if I can synthesize that into a different image that still made the same point.

True, it would have been lovely to get a whole tree framed by the rust colored wall, but how else could I frame the image to give that contrast of pink and purple, light and shadow? I started with a wide angle lens, and looked at including a number of branches and a bevy of blooms. As I continued, I moved to a telephoto lens and kept reducing the picture to the essence of color and tonal contrast. Here are some of the results.










Are they better or worse than the symmetrical composition of a full tree framed by the building I saw in my mind? I’ll leave that for the viewer to decide. But the exercise in examining the core reasons for wanting to shoot the image allowed me to get around the big brain filter and get the essence of the image I had in my mind. And that's the lesson I want to share.