Foundations
Your technical knowledge and skills empower you to take creative control. Understanding the nature of light enables you to manipulate it. Learning about the exposure triangle teaches you the limitations and compromises of digital photography. And the ability to shoot in manual mode means that you are making the decisions for your portrait photography, not your camera’s algorithm. Build your knowledge here in the Foundations section, then go get inspired by the tips, techniques and ideas across the rest of the site.
Kit
With hundreds of different camera bodies and lenses to choose from, in addition to a limitless number of accessories, it’s tough to know where to draw the line when it comes to kit; there’s a fine balance between having what you really need and buying equipment that you’ll use only once.
Foundations: Choosing Your Camera
Obviously you won’t get far in photography without having the necessary kit – but which type of camera is best for portrait photography? Thereâ...
Foundations: Choosing A Lens
Your images will only ever be as good as the glass you use, so don’t blow all your budget on an amazing camera body and end up with a cheap or ki...
Foundations: Accessories For Portrait Photographers
Once you’ve got your camera and lens choice sorted, there are optional accessories to consider. In addition, if you are shooting professionally, ...
Foundations: Studio Lighting And Modifiers
Photography isn’t a cheap pursuit and it’s all too easy to spend a huge amount of money on equipment, but a lot of it will end up being unused ...
Technical Skills
There are hundreds of choices to make when taking a portrait, even once you’ve selected a model and a location. Although this may seem daunting, it provides a creative difference between images taken by two photographers, even if they are shooting the same person in the same place, with the same kit.
Foundations: The Exposure Triangle
Exposure is the technical term for the creation of a photographic image. An exposure can be deemed underexposed, correctly exposed or overexposed a...
Foundations: Aperture, The Pupil Of Your Camera’s Eye
The aperture is like the pupil in a human eye – it’s the hole in the lens which permits light to enter through to reach the camera’s sensor. ...
Foundations: Shutter Speed, Your Camera’s Eyelid
If the aperture is like the pupil in a human eye, then the camera’s shutter is like an eyelid – light can only enter while it is open. The â€s...
Foundations: ISO, Adjusting Your Camera’s Sensitivity To Light
The ISO setting affects how sensitive the camera’s sensor is to the light that falls on it. It is the third element in the triangle that determin...
Lighting
An amateur may not know quite why one portrait looks so much better than another one taken in slightly different lighting conditions. A subject will look at a shot of themselves and instantly assess: “Do I like how I look in this one?”, but not necessarily be able to understand what part light has played in their conclusion.
Foundations: Traditional Head Positions
As with the traditional lighting patterns, these head positions hark back to a time when meeting specific technical expectations was considered mor...
Foundations: White Balance, The Colour Of Light
Our eyes automatically adjust to different lighting conditions as we move from place to place, and we don’t tend to notice the subtle colour tint...
Foundations: Working With Natural Light
Working With Natural Light Natural light is freely available, requires little or no kit, and comes in enough different forms to keep your portraits...
Foundations: Learning To See The Light
Above all other elements – composition, camera settings and camera equipment included – lighting will determine whether a shot goes from being pret...
Composition
Humans don’t absorb all the detail in a scene or image instantly, but instead we selectively scan it. Our eyes are first drawn to eyes and faces, certain colours and areas of high contrast. To test which area of an image is the main focal point, turn it upside down and note which area your eye is pulled towards. This trick turns the photograph into an abstract, making it easier to be objective.\
Foundations: Shoot With The End In Mind
The end intention of your image will – to some extent – determine the best composition to use. For example, if the subject wants to use the photogr...
Foundations: Image Formats
The vast majority of cameras provide a set, rectangular image frame. However, photo editing software enables you to access other formats too, inclu...
Foundations: Cropping
A crop is the removal of unwanted elements from the frame in order to improve the composition or to increase the focus on other elements. For examp...
Foundations: The Rule of Thirds
The Rule of Thirds provides a guide as to the most impactful place within the frame to place key elements. Imagine two horizontal lines that split ...
Post Production
Some people are critical of postproduction, thinking a skilled photographer should get everything right in-camera. However, even the famous film photographers used postproduction, burning and dodging to enhance their work in traditional darkrooms. It is simply the second part of the creative process for producing the end image envisioned by the photographer.
Foundations: Getting Started With Post-Production
One of the hardest things about editing images is that there’s no obvious finish point – after spending hours zoomed into different areas of the im...
Foundations: Workflow Essentials -Keeping Things Organised
It’s easy to quickly accrue hundreds and then thousands of images. A good workflow will help you organise, store and retrieve them so you never fin...