Who has not made outdoor portraits once? When you go out there with your camera and go with family or friends later or later you end up taking pictures of portraits, either individually or as a group. In this article I bring you a series of tips to take into account the next time you want to do some outdoor portrait that will allow you to get better results.
Look for the shadow
Many times we have the feeling that the portraits come out better because we have more light.
Photo by floodfokk The reality is that, in the majority of the occasions, in the shade we have more than enough light for the photo to come out correctly and there are a series of advantages that make the result normally better if we take photos in the shade .
When the sun is projected directly on the face of who we are photographing, it is normal for the application of light to project unwanted shadows on our face that detract from our work.
In addition, depending on the position of the sun with respect to who we are photographing can cause discomfort that make our or our model adopt unflattering expressions.
That the shadow is uniform
Life at Sunset 6 by Stephen VanceThere are times when we use the shadow of a tree to protect who we photograph. The reason may be that the environment is pleasant or simply that we do not have a better shadow.
The problem often presented by shadows of trees is that light passes irregularly through the leaves, leaving areas of light and shadow areas.
When you are making the frame for the photo, make sure that there are no areas of light that directly affect the face of the people you are making the photo if, for example, it is a group photo, because this difference of light in the different areas will cause excessive tonal contrast on the faces.
Watch the background
The background can be a perfect ally or definitely ruin the photo.
Try to avoid elements in the background that may attract too much attention to what really interests us in this type of photographs, which are people.
Take advantage of the bokeh
Photo of alarzyThe bokeh is a term of Japanese origin used in photography to refer to the aesthetics of unfocused areas that produces the use of a reduced depth of field in a photograph.
Making the photo with the background at a distance and using an opening that allows us to leave our background out of focus, we can take advantage of combinations of colors in the background to get a very nice appearance in our composition without neglecting attention to the main reason of the photo.
And of course … focus on the eyes
This advice is not strictly associated with outdoor portraits, but I did not want to save it for that, since for me it is the number one tip in portrait photography.
In other words, if this advice fails us, the rest of the advice will be of little importance.
And is that a portrait in which the main element is the face, if we can not get the eyes properly focused, we will find an uneasy feeling when contemplating the photo that will not end up pleasing us completely.
And to you, can you think of any other advice?
In preparing this article I made an exercise of reflection of those elements that I thought I should take into account when making outdoor portraits, but it is likely that when you read it you can think of many other more or less obvious advice. I would not like to close the article without first asking you to give me your own recommendations, those that you apply because you think they work very well.
