Portraits: Common Mistakes

Okay, so here's the deal. Last Saturday I allowed someone else to use my camera for a while. With all due respect to this person, allow me to point out common mistakes in the pictures that were taken.

1. Someone else is in the picture but not really in it. Or in this case, their butt is in the picture. Not attractive people, not attractive. Also, the background is distracting, and the placing of the subject is off- it is neither in the exact center nor is it quite enough to the side that the eyes are drawn to him.

2. The subject is so near that you can clearly see all his defects, such as pimples or bags under his eyes. Also, part of the head is cut off. It is better to get all the head in and then a bit of space over it, or a lot of space- it depends on the feeling you want to convey and on the setting. Practice will help you get it right.

3. Not enough background- or not any! This kind of picture can be overwhelming to look at. You need to make sure that there is a background. If it's too cluttery, use a lower aperture so that it will be blurry and not distract from the person's face. Backgrounds like plain walls, the sea, the beach, grass and trees are all good ones when you want the picture to be focused on the person and not anything else.

4. You can't see the person's face. In fact, almost the only thing you can see in this picture is the boy's arm and elbow- not particularly attractive from a photographic nor from a more documental point of view. You are not evoking any memories or emotions by photographing a person's elbow. Now, there are cases in which it is fine not to show the person's face- but these are rarer than not, and the more practice you get as a photographer, the more quickly you will recognize these moments.

5. The subject is blurry. This has an easy solution: higher ISO, more light, or half a second more when clicking the shutter to ensure that your camera correctly identified your main subject and focused on it. There is nothing else really wrong with the picture, sure, it could use more light; but it otherwise looks fine. Since it is so easy to solve this problem, please make sure to do so!