Rick Sammon's Digital Photography Secrets

Chapter 3. Photographing People

The camera looks both ways – in picturing the subject, you are also picturing a part of yourself. This chapter illustrates that point. Oh yeah, lots of tech talk here about lenses, flashes, reflectors and diffusers, too.

Fun Facts for Better People Pictures

I'll start off this chapter with some interesting facts about people pictures – facts that can help you become a better photographer. We naturally prefer pictures of people in which their pupils are open wide as compared to pictures of people in which their pupils are closed down. That's one reason why we like pictures of people taken in subdued lighting conditions, in the shade and on cloudy days – situations where the pupils are open wider than they are in bright light and on sunny days. Thus lighting, and coordinately the subject's pupils, can affect whether the viewer finds the picture appealing.

Black-and-white portraiture is attention getting, but contrast is actually more important than removing the color from an image. So think contrast, which you can add with a reflector or flash, when taking people pictures.

The majority of famous painters "illuminated" their subjects from above and to the left. For whatever reasons, we seem to prefer images taken with this kind of lighting. Here are three of ...