How to make your Bridal Portraits POP!

This is a bridal portrait I did for Jessica. I'm pretty proud of it. Not only is she a gorgeous bride, but I pretty much nailed this photograph. I usually place my subject or model with the sun behind them and light their front with a flash. Well the sun had pretty much gone down by this time so I took a Nikon SB600, stuck it on a monopod, and jammed it behind the handrail on the bridge. I aimed it at the back of her head and it looks just like the sun is backlighting her hair. Her front is lit with an AlienBees B800. I do this all the time when shooting portraits. 

Here are two images side by side so that you can see the difference it makes. The image on the left looks pretty good, and I would like it if I didn't see the image on the right. I think it looks so much better having her hair backlit. If you really want to make your portraits stand out, stick a light behind your subjects head. 

Keep reading my blog and I'll try to keep giving out Photography Tips from time to time to help you become a better photographer. Feel free to comment if you have any questions or you just wanna say hi!

How'd I do That?

 I took this photograph of Cassy Cameron about 90 minutes before Sunset.  It was submitted to, and published by Swimsuit Illustrated Magazine. So what made this image stand out to the editor?  See the sun peeking over the sea oats? Normally, Cassy would be a dark silhouette in this image. I could have exposed the image for a blue sky. My exposure  probably would have been around 1/200 sec. f/16 at ISO 200. I probably would have set my AlienBees B800 at about 1/4 power and it would have looked pretty good. I didn't want it to look pretty good. I wanted it to look DRAMATIC. I wanted the editor to look at it and say "Dang, that looks different." So how did I do it? I set my aperture to f/22 and my shutter speed to 1/250 sec. That made the beautiful afternoon sky go pretty dark. Now I had to pump a lot of power out of my AlienBees B800 flash to expose her properly, but that was OK, I knew it would do it shooting through a Beauty Dish. It wouldn't do it through an umbrella. I digress, but I know this because I set my flash up in my living room one rainy day and metered what it would do from a distance of six feet, shooting through each of my light modifiers. Now I don't have to waste time on location figuring out what my equipment will do. Anyhow, that's how I did it, and the important thing is it made the cut and it got published. If you don't understand all these terms and fractions, that's OK, I didn't at first either. I am completely self taught and I did it by reading, watching tutorials on You Tube and experimenting. Here are a couple more images from that shoot for your viewing pleasure. They made the cut too and were published. The one with her laying on the sand with the bird in the water was taken using the exact same technique. Enjoy!

What do I look for in a Portrait

There are several things I want to capture when I shoot a portrait. First, I want to have an interesting background. I hate the canvas backgrounds that you see in everybody's family pic they have hanging in their hallway. Nothing about it is interesting at all. Sometimes it looks like a dirty sheet from some seedy motel. The second thing I think about is, where is the sun? If I can, I like to position my model so I get backlighting in her hair and maybe a rimlight around her body. This adds a 3 dimensional look to your photo by providing separation from your background. Next I want to evenly light her with a flash. I want to make it look like I didn't really use a flash at all. I do want to see the catchlight in her eye from the flash. The eyes are very important to me. I will focus on her eye that is nearest to me. Last but not least, I like to have something in the foreground if at all possible. You really can't do this often with a headshot, but if you are doing 1/2, 3/4, or a full body shot, this should be easier. Oh, I almost forgot, it really helps if you have a stunning model like my friend Emily. She makes it easy to take some good pics. There you have it. Not that difficult if you just plan a tiny bit and use what's around you.

It's all about the eyes!

Always remember when you are taking a portrait of someone, to keep the eyes as sharp as possible. To do this, I always focus on the nearest eye to me. I always try to make sure I get a catchlight (the reflection of whatever light source I am using) in the upper part and off to one side of the pupil. This makes the eyes stand out. Whatever I do in post processing, I never blur the eyes. This photograph was blurred a little in post, but I removed the blur from the eyes. We set up and took this shot in less than five minutes. One SB-800 flash camera right triggered wireless by a SU-800 commander. I get asked often why I don't just use the commander built into my Nikon D-300S. The reason is the SU-800 uses infared light to trigger the flash and the onboard commander on the camera uses a series of really fast pulses from the on-camera flash to trigger the off camera flash. These pulses of light, although they won't show up on your image, will cause your subjects pupils to contract to almost a pinpoint. I like big pupils!

Nothing is worse than a boring background.

Except a sharp stick in the eye....maybe. I always try to find an interesting background when I am on a location shoot. It can be anything from an old dead tree to pilings from the Cocoa Beach Pier as in this image. If nothing else, try to find a background with some cool colors and shapes and then shoot with a shallow depth of field to blur it some. You can always jazz up a background with a gel'd off camera flash....We will talk about that more later.