Portraits

These days everyone has some way of taking digital portraits and photographs. Using the camera, camera phone, web cam, or other means, taking a photograph is no longer something you have to wait in line for at the mall or schedule a portrait sitting months in advance. Just whip out that digital camera and get ready. At least it sounds this easy. Unfortunately, the home produced portraits do not always turn out that great. If it were so easy, the mall shops and studios would be out of business. However, with a little understanding of your camera, you can take excellent photos on your own.
First, grab the camera user guide and find the page that has the diagram of all the symbols. Because the camera dials and buttons have limited space, they tend to use cryptic symbols to explain everything. You are going to find the portrait mode symbol and set your camera to this mode. This is specifically designed with the understanding that there will be a primary subject in the photo. Portraits typically blur the background a little to draw your attention to the main subject in the photo. There are other settings that account for multiple subjects, but for this project, you want just one focus.
If possible, you are going to want to blur the background even more than the portraits mode can create. To do this, simply zoom the focus in as close as you can go. You may have to step back away from the subject to get them back in focus. This is fine because it will enhance the fact that you have one subject that is the focus.

Outdoor Portraits

For outdoor portraits and there is plenty of light on your subject  (sunset, sunrise) then you can avoid using the flash on your camera. If you want to turn the flash completely on for fill light there is a setting where you allow the camera to decide whether flash is needed. I prefer to manually set my flash. You will want to use the flash in daylight to fill in unwanted shadows. The appropriate lighting is determined by what you want your final image to look like.  I like to place the sun behind and off to one side of the subject. With the sun behind and to the side, I then use my flash (strobe) to light the subject from the front. This mixture of sun and flash can create a beautiful portrait photograph.For

Indoor Portraits

Indoor portraits it does become a little more complicated. I would suggest you experiment with 3 strobe lights and attain the desire effect you are looking for. A main light,  a fill light and a hair light. In my workshops I teach about indoor and outdoor portraits.

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