From the Studio; Magical Photo Tips, or not

It happens to the best of us and not just us ex-pro photographers either. Someone has asked you to take their picture using their camera or your camera. “Sure, why not” you say, grab the camera and click off a shot or two. They are happy and you are happy that you helped a friend. But could you have done a better job and gotten a better photograph if you had known just some of the professional tricks known to only a secret sect of professional photographers? You might have if there was a secret sect of professional photographers which there isn’t, but there is a trick or two that anyone can and should use. This happened to me just the other day and I thought I would share the tricks I used to click off a couple of shots of our neighbors before they headed out to a Halloween party.

Let us start with some basic set up for any picture; HEAD ROOM and BACKGROUND. The very first thing I do is click off a quick shot just to see what I have as far as exposure and lighting goes. You will also notice that the people’s faces are not in the middle of the picture and you do not see lots of sky above their heads. The tip here is to temporary put the face or the main subject of your photograph in the middle of your picture. (This is assuming you are using a camera and not a phone.) Push the shutter button part way down. This will lock in the exposure and focus for your shot. Now recompose your shot so that what you see is only what you are photographing and not a lot of unwanted stuff such as sky above the heads of your subject.

Next watch your background. Shifting just a little to your left or right can make all the difference in your photograph. What you can not see in this shot is that there is a lamp post in the yard behind Mr. Wizard that looked like he had lamp growing out of his shoulder. I shifted my weight to my left foot and suddenly the lamp was behind his head and out of my picture. However I was so concerned with the lamp that I didn’t notice that I had cut off the witch’s foot. This was a miss on my part and is the biggest reason there is to always take more than one picture of anything. You just never know until you look or until it is too late. I could have had a spell cast on me and been in real trouble had I stopped at on shot.

When I checked my first shot I also noticed that not only had I cut off her foot but she also appeared to only have one leg and it didn’t have a foot. I fixed this by having her move her dress so that we could see both legs and both of her feet. Another quick tip; notice her broom handle and the way it is pointing up to him. Think about how the picture would look if she had the broom handle pointing away from him. Also notice how his hands seem to lead your eyes to her face. You, as the photographer, can and should make the viewers eye see what you want them to see. You do this with lines and color and as I did with the broom handle and his hands and arms.

The next big trick is to watch the subject’s chin. For some unknown reason people tend to point their chin up in the air or down on their chest when you point a camera at them. Seems like I spent most of my career telling people to lower or raise their chins. It isn’t a big thing but if you look at the first picture and then the rest of them you will see I not only had him lower his chin I had him tilt his head toward her just a little. As for her I had her raise her chin to give her an appearance of being aloof as you can see in this third shot. Again if you try it several ways and take lots of pictures one of them is bound to work.

Last thing I want to address is lighting. The last shot I took I shot too fast and the flash did not have enough time to recharge and therefore did not go off. That’s right, I used a flash outside in the bright sun light. The bad news here is that most point and shoot type of cameras do not have a flash strong enough to do what my big flash is capable of doing. If you look at the last shot and then look at the others you will see how the shadows are softer and you can see a little more detail in the faces. You can also achieve this effect by reflecting light back up into the subject using a light colored or reflective material. However that might be a little much for a quick couple of shots like these.  

So there you have it; just a few common sense tips to help you gain membership into that secret sect of professional photographers. That would be the Al Allen School of “DON’T JUST POINT YOUR CAMERA” Remember the next time you have your camera out to grab a couple of shots; if all you want to do is take a picture all you have to do is push the shutter button. To create a photograph you have got to put in a little more effort. It’s not magic you know, it just looks that way. At least when I do it, it does. Hey, it’s my blog and I can say what I want to.