Portrait Photography - Capturing A Person's Character

By Mark Trentt for digital-photography-4-all.com

Portrait photography is the art of bringing out a person's personality in a picture. This is the mark of a truly great portrait photographer. He or She needs to bring out a person's character thru the proper positioning and lighting. With advances today in digital photography, one need not sit forever to produce a portrait picture . Portrait production can be done in a snap using your Sony, Fuji or Canon digital cameras.

A portrait picture communicates the likeness of a person, mostly through the face. If you are producing a portrait picture, you MUST focus on the face of your subject. You also have to know the characteristics of your subject in order to come up with portrait pictures that really reflect the subject's attributes.

Since, in producing a portrait, the face is the measure of a person's character, you must find an element in his or her face that would mirror his or her personality on the picture. After this, you must be able to guide your subject to project this character thru the proper portrait make-up, hair style, clothes and posture. As for yourself, you need proper photo lighting and correct digital camera placement. All these photography elements make for a great portrait. With the right mix, you can make a nose appear smaller, make a person look slimmer, and other photography tricks.

Of course, not all the work rests on the portrait photographer. You, as the portrait model, also need to know what personality you want to convey in your pictures. Bring out your Nikon digital camera and ask a friend to take some photos of you in various clothes and poses. Print or preview the snapshots and see which one you like best. You will also be helping the photographer a lot with this procedure because you are immediately giving him ideas as to how you want the portrait to be.