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5 Tips For Professional Looking Portraits

November 17, 20223 min read

5 Tips For Professional Looking Portraits

So, you’ve been taking pictures of your friends, your family, your kid, or perhaps even a few clients. You are loving every minute of it, yet you just can’t seem to get that “professional look” to your images that you see on the web? Well I am here to give you 5 tips to help you achieve that look you are going for.

Tip #1- Shoot With A Wide Aperture

Couple engagement photo

Widening your aperture (lowering your F-stop) is a great way to achieve a more professional look to your portraits. A wider aperture means a shallower depth of field. This allows you to get your subject in focus, while giving a nice blur to the background. Two of my favorite lenses when I was starting out were the Canon 50mm 1.8 and the Canon 85mm 1.8.

Both of those lenses I listed are very affordable, and can yield a beautiful portrait result.

Tip #2- Backlight, Backlight, Backlight

Backlit Couple in Yosemite

When I am photographing a person (or a group of people) I am almost always putting the sun behind my subject. This is called backlighting. When you put the sun behind your subject, it allows for more even light on the faces. The light coming in from behind can also give a nice rim light to separate the subject from the background. You can see both of these characteristics in the image above.

Tip #3- Be Mindful Of Composition

Mammoth Lakes Couple

The composition can really affect the overall result of you portraits. Sometimes I will take 10 photos of a very similar composition, and yet one will always stand out among the rest. Explore different compositions while shooting. Use the rule of thirds, use symmetry, get close to your subject, get far away etc. The same scene with the same lighting will yield so many different results if you change up your composition.

Things to look out for when composing:

1. Try to avoid cutting off limbs and the tops of heads.

2. Try to avoid having trees or fence posts growing out of someone’s head.

3. Try to avoid distractions in the background.

You can often fix these three mistakes by minor adjustments to your composition.

Tip #4- Edit With Care

Before and After Photo

Post-Processing (editing) your images is a huge part of getting that professional look. Often a photo that has all the makings of a professional image, may miss the mark solely due to editing. It is very easy to over-edit an image. I usually feel like an image with less post processing will come out better than an over-processed image, especially when the person doing the editing is inexperienced. Start lightly in your editing journey and ease into doing heavier post processing. Learn to take good photographs first, then take them to the next level.

Tip #5- Observe And Make Notes

This is the most important tip I give you. You have to learn to observe and dissect photos that you like. You have to be aware of the certain image characteristics that give that photo a certain look. For example, is the background in focus or blurred out? Are the colors muted or bold? Is the image high contrast or low contrast? These are just a few of many questions you should be asking yourself when viewing images you are attracted to. Only by answering these questions can you really start to emulate these different looks.

And there you have it. These are five very simple tips that you can use to start getting that professional look to your images. Best of luck to you!

-Nic Hilton

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