Taking great Portraits

Taking great Portraits.

How to take portraits in a magazine dedicated to glamour photography???? Has the man gone mad?

Well I hope not at least. Portraits are normally considered to be a picture of a face. Although I like to think more loosely that a portrait is a picture of the face, or part of the face. A glamour photograph is really an image that delights the viewer by being sensual, erotic and enticeing. I know that glamour photography these days is a lot more than that and any human form that is naked, partially naked, and set in a scene seems to do. The truth is they are really just soft porn. Especially when you have a set of some 80 pictures.

So as I edit GP Online I can lay down what I consider to be glamour. So there. Yes we do have many "soft porn" images month in month out, because it is so much part and parcel of the glamour industry, yet true glamour can be defined. Some photographers have the ability to turn out these huge sets of pictures and nearly all of them can seriously be considered glamour in their own right. Any picture that can stand alone and tell a story and entice the viewer to" imagine" or "fantasise" is a good glamour picture.

So as with a portrait. A single shot of a beautiful face can certainly be erotic and sensual. So that's my excuse for this article about portrait. Before I go on though I must explain that lighting and pose are not in this case what is normally taught for portraiture. No because our aim isn't solely portrait. Here is a case that we have hired a beautiful model and we will mainly take normal glamour shots, but let's not waste this opportunity to enhance our book, (portfolio) with some lovely portraits.

If you look at the pictures below you will see how the photographers have during a normal session grabbed that opportunity to take some lovely portraits.

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I wanted you to see these pictures to show that special lighting isn't needed. Excellent portraits can be taken using the normal studio lighting you are using for the shoot. If you have read a book on portraiture then you'll understand why I am banging on about this. The trick is to not get in too close. Absolute minimum lens is 80mm anything less and you are too close, the fish eye effect comes into play sightly distorting the models features. For this type of shoot portfolio I usually work somewhere around 150mm. I am well back from the model and not getting in the way of the lights.

So what are the secrets to such easy head and shoulders pictures. Well first you will notice about these pictures that the more tightly cropped the picture the more dramatic the end result. Secondly not one of these models is straight on to the camera. In most of them the camera is to differing degrees slightly above the models eye line. Each picture works in it's own right, but of the pairs one is better than the other. That's for you to work out and decide why.

Now below I have included some more shots from the sessions to show you that ordinary lighting was used and nothing special was added or taken away. Anyway any excuse to fill the pages with great pictures!!!

Earlier I said that a portrait could be part of a face. Here below are some examples of what I mean.


Tight cropping concentrates the viewer on the eyes and mouth.	Obviously lip shots handled in two different ways.		No tight cropping, but the angle concentrates the viewer on the models mouth.

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