Tips to Take Good Pictures of People

Find your preferred location – best is a place with a simple background. Trees, foliage, grass, the ocean or a lake work nicely for backgrounds.

It is important to minimize patterns, shapes and (too many) colors so your photograph doesn’t look cluttered, which is not so easy on the eye.

When hanging or otherwise displaying a photograph of a person, you want to make sure that the focus of the shot is on the subject’s face and the use of a simple picture frame, in addition to a simple background, can help maintain that goal.

Behind you and to one side is the best place for the sun to be.  If it’s bright, put people in shade so their faces don’t get washed out.  You may need to use a fill-flash if the shade is too dark, though.  Late afternoon is the best time of day for this type of photograph as it gives a nice warm, golden glow to your shot.  If you want to create a halo-like look through your subject’s hair, take a photograph with the sun shining behind the subject.  If you are shooting indoors, it’s best to get a more natural look by bouncing the flash off of a wall or ceiling.  Of course, you need a camera with a positional, or external, flash for this. 

Point-and-shoot cameras don’t have interchangeable lenses, of course, so if that’s what you have you may want to move on to the next set of tip on positioning.  If you’re using an SLR camera, use a 135mm lens (or similar) at the widest aperture (lowest f-number) for the best perspective – this will blur the background and highlight your subject’s face.  If the background of your photograph is important, then use a small aperture (high f-number) so that everything is in focus. 

Don’t take whole body shots if you don’t have to; get close and zoom right in on your subject’s face.  For great close-ups, get at eye level with your subject, especially children.  Try overfilling the frame with the subject’s face; crop out the top of their head.  If you want to get whole body shots, the photograph would be more pleasing if the subject is sitting – in a chair or on the ground – or kneeling or even lying down. 

As a general rule you should try and keep the eyes, but not necessarily the head, in the center of the frame.  The exception to this is if the person is looking slightly to one side, then add some extra space to that side.  If your subject is off to the side, you may need to control he exposure because you could have too much contrast in the shot.  To do this, zoom close in on your subject – like their face – then press the exposure lock button; keep the button pressed down while you recompose and take your shot. 

No one likes to look at a fancy silver plated picture frames with pictures of stiff people in them, right? Get your subject to laugh and be relaxed. If you’re photographing children, give them something to play with. Talk to people about themselves or where they’re from to relax them. Make sure you and your camera are ready to shoot without having to make adjustments so your subject doesn’t get antsy while waiting for you to take the photograph.

With a moving subject, you want to blur the background to emphasize movement or speed. Track the person with your camera. Use a medium to slow shutter speed. Use the flash to help “freeze” the subject with a moving background.

This is a common problem of being a photographer, professional or not.  You end up with many great pictures, but you are not in any of them!  Every once in a while you have to ask someone else to take a shot so you can be in some photographs and be remembered in the future.  Put your camera’s self-timer to use and get in the shot with the whole group.

If these tips don’t end up improving your photographs and if all else fails, do what I do – just keep shooting.  Often times, I just prefer to put my camera in auto mode and shoot five hundred pictures just to get three good ones!