Portrait Photography
Portrait photography or portraiture in photography is a photograph of a person or group of people that captures the personality of the subject by using effective lighting, backdrops, and poses.
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Helms' Photography Tips
1. Watch your backgrounds! Clean, simply, free of clutter or distracting items.
2. Limit your focus! If you can blur the background, do it.
3. High resolution is always better! Low resolution pictures or blurry pictures are the worst possible choice.
4. High contrast is best! If it doesn't look good in greyscale then it won't look good in color. Balance your values- equal parts high and low values.
5. Clear communication through symbolism and color. What are you trying to communicate about your figure? Every color matters and tells a story. What story are you telling?
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Lighting Terms:
Three-point lighting
One of the most basic lighting plans is called three-point lighting. This plan uses three (and sometimes four) lights to fully model (bring out details and the three-dimensionality of) the subject's features. The three main lights used in this light plan are as follows:
Key-light
Also called a main light, the key light is usually placed to one side of the subject's face, between 30 and 60 degrees off center and a bit higher than eye level. The purpose of the Key-Light is to give shape (modelling) to a subject, typically a face. This relies on the first principle of lighting, white comes out of a plane and black goes back into a plane. The depth of shadow created by the Main-Light can be controlled with a Fill-Light.
High-Key
This is a technique used to obtain a portrait where the predominant color is white or light-yellow. The background should be entirely white and several lights can be used, all at the same time.
Low-Key
Opposed to High-Key portraits, this technique is used only to highlight a specific part of the subject's face, often half of the face if only one light source is used or just the facial contour if two lights are used.
Fill-in light
In modern photography, the fill-in light is used to control the contrast in the scene and is nearly always placed above the lens axis and is a large light source (think of the sky behind your head when taking a photograph). As the amount of light is less than the key-light (main-light), the fill acts by lifting the shadows only (particularly relevant in digital photography where the noise lives in the shadows). It is true to say that light bounces around a room and fills in the shadows but this does not mean that a fill-light should be placed opposite a key-light (main-light) and it does not soften shadows, it lifts them. The relative intensity (ratio) of the Key-light to the fill-light is most easily discussed in terms of "Stops" difference (where a Stop is a doubling or halving of the intensity of light). A 2 Stop reduction in intensity for the Fill-Light would be a typical start point to maintain dimensionality (modelling) in a portrait (head and shoulder) shot..
Back light
Back lights, or accent lighting, serve the purpose of accentuating a subject. Typically a back light will separate a subject from a background. Examples would be a light shining onto a subject's hair to add a rim effect or shining onto a background to lift the tones of a background. There can be many accent lights in a shot, another example would be a spotlight on a handbag in a fashion shot. When used for separation, i.e. a hair-light, the light should not be more dominant than the main light for general use. Think in terms of a "kiss of moonlight", rather than a "strike of lightning", although there are no "shoulds" in photography and it is up to the photographer to decide on the authorship of their shot.
Kicker
A kicker is a form of accent light. Often used to give a backlit edge to a subject on the shadow side of the subject.
Butterfly lighting
Butterfly lighting uses only two lights. The key light is placed directly in front of the subject, often above the camera or slightly to one side, and a bit higher than is common for a three-point lighting plan. The second light is a rim light.
Often a reflector is placed below the subject's face to provide fill light and soften shadows.
This lighting may be recognized by the strong light falling on the forehead, the bridge of the nose, the upper cheeks, and by the distinct shadow below the nose that often looks rather like a butterfly and thus, provides the name for this lighting technique.
Butterfly lighting was a favourite of famed Hollywood portraitist George Hurrell, which is why this style of lighting is often called Paramount lighting.
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