Chapter 9: Portrait Photography
A portrait is nothing but a photo of a person, quite simply. But, in order to make a great portrait you should be able to capture or at least evoke a bit of the personality of the person of whom you are taking a portrait. Candid portraits will show the personality of the person you are capturing, but a good model, like an actor, can portray different personalities. This is something to keep in mind.
Portrait photography is simple to explain, but not necessarily the easiest type of photography to accomplish correctly. You can simply point a camera at a person and create a great candid portrait, or you can create an elaborate lighting setup to create a more stylized portrait. Neither type of portrait is better than the other, but I will say that the D800 excels in a studio environment when shooting portraits because the higher resolution looks better better under controlled lighting. That’s not to say that you can’t do natural-light portraits with the D800, because you absolutely can.
“Some will not recognize the truthfulness of my mirror. Let them remember that I am not here to reflect the surface... but must penetrate inside. My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth. My human faces are truer than the real ones.” – Paul Klee
Studio Portraits
With studio portraits the lighting and background ...
