Make your subject stand out !!
That’s one of the most important thing when you do portrait photography but in a way it’s important for all type of photography…
To make sure that your subject is really valorise and is standing out you have many technics. For example : uniformity of the baground / complementarity of the color / shallow depth of field to blur the background.
In this picture I decided to activate the 3 technics all together to have my subject really catching all the attention of the viewer. Here more specifically I wanted to attract attention on her very deep blue eyes…
Background uniformity : this can be created by a texture or a color. In this case you can see the pattern of the grass creating the soft bed of this picture.
complementarity of colors : it works super well when you use complementary colors like wearing yellow jacket in a blue/ violet background or wearing a red jacket in the forest…. On this picture the black and white outfit of the subject is helping to detach her from the green of the grass
shallow depth of field : that’s the trick you can use in almost all the situations as long as you’ve got a lens with a great aperture ( usually f2,8 or lower works well and you can also have higher f value if you have long focal >70mm). this technic will help you to blur everything in front and behind your point of focus. As you can see here only the face is really focus and sharped and it helps to put big emphasis on it.
Would be happy to hear about your technics to isolate your subject ? Do you frame your subjects ? Do you use motion blur around them ?
Let’s talk tech :
I used for this picture a very classic 50mm f1,8. This lens is for sure THE lens you need to have when you start photography. It is definitely your goto for portrait and has the best price over quality ratio among all lenses as you can have great aperture and use it therefore as well for night photography.
I used here as well a fast shutter speed (1/1600s) to make sure that I would freeze the expression of the subject.