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    The Portrait Photography Handbook: Your Guide to Taking Better Portrait Photographs
    The Portrait Photography Handbook: Your Guide to Taking Better Portrait Photographs
    The Portrait Photography Handbook: Your Guide to Taking Better Portrait Photographs
    Ebook76 pages51 minutes

    The Portrait Photography Handbook: Your Guide to Taking Better Portrait Photographs

    By David Johnston

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    About this ebook

    The Portrait Photography Handbook is an installment in the Photography Essentials Series. This guide to all things that have to do with portrait photography is designed to cover multiple topics that will help you shoot better portrait photographs. The Portrait Photography Handbook will take you through the topics of composition, how to shoot various types of situations, lighting, how to manage your clients, kid portraits, engagement sessions, weddings and much more. Implementing the lessons covered in The Portrait Photography Handbook will help you take more detailed, and better composed portrait photographs that will improve your photography portfolio.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDavid Johnston
    Release dateApr 7, 2015
    ISBN9781311020758
    The Portrait Photography Handbook: Your Guide to Taking Better Portrait Photographs

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      Book preview

      The Portrait Photography Handbook - David Johnston

      The photography Essentials Series

      The Portrait Photography Handbook

      By David Johnston

      Copyright 2015 David Johnston

      Distributed by Smashwords

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Chapter 1 - A Brief Overview of Camera Settings

      What is Exposure?

      Understanding exposure is the first step to creating interesting photographs in manual mode. If you just got a DSLR camera I’m begging you to learn how to use creative exposures with your camera. If you’ve been using your DSLR in green mode (fully automatic mode) you’ve probably experienced some frustration with trying to make your photographs look better than ones taken on your phone. I’ve been there and I had to figure it out the hard way over an entire year! Let me teach you how to take better photographs by understanding exposure so that you don’t waste a year.

      Exposure

      Exposure is how bright or dark a photograph is. If a photographer says their photo is under-exposed, it’s too dark. If they say their photograph is over-exposed, it’s too bright. The trick is getting the exposure just right. That’s it! I told you exposure is easy. While the fully automatic mode will balance the exposure, using creative exposure modes will help you take dynamic photographs while balancing your own exposures.

      The Problem with Green Mode

      When I talk about green mode I’m talking about fully automatic mode. This is the mode on your camera that chooses every setting for you. Sounds great and easy right? The camera will make my photograph look great, right? Wrong. The camera has no idea what type of photo you want or what situation you are in. Its one job is to read surrounding light and balance it. It doesn’t care if your kids are running around inside and you don’t want to use a flash because it makes them look like they are in a prison! It doesn’t care that it’s dark and you don’t want your family to be blurry. Let me show you. Here’s a photograph using automatic mode followed by the same photograph I took using a creative mode.

      Automatic

      Manual

      I did not edit these photos; they were just taken with a balanced exposure. The first photograph was taken using automatic mode. The camera chose everything for me and determined the scene was too dark so it incorporated the flash. The shutter speed was very fast because the flash was used. That froze the water in place and caused inconsistent lighting with distracting highlights throughout the photograph.

      The second photograph taken using a creative exposure mode (manual mode) at the same balanced exposure. This time I chose all of the settings myself. I was able to make the water look smoother, more dynamic, and less distracting while showing the same lighting throughout the photograph. My point: stop using automatic mode!

      Using Shutter, Aperture, and ISO Together

      Let’s start with a story. I have found myself on the sidelines of a University of Tennessee football game in 2013. My mission: get amazing photographs that can be used in sports articles. No pressure, right? The game started around noon and it was a beautiful, sunny day. I knew that I wanted to use a fast shutter speed so that the athlete’s movements wouldn’t be blurry, so I set the shutter speed

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