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Outdoor Family Portrait Tips?
I have a Nikon D3100 and am going to try to take some outdoor family portraits this weekend. We are going to a park and it will be sunny. So far I mostly use the auto mode and a little of the guide modes. Any tips or suggestions to make our portraits look great?
Tags: Family, outdoor, portrait, sun, tips
5 Answers to “Outdoor Family Portrait Tips?”
1
Use a tri-pod and I find closer you can get the camera with everyone in the frame the better. Also make sure that if you are using the timer to take the pic you know where you are going and how you want to be posed, that way you don’t get a nice pic of your family with your back turned running to “find” a spot, although that might make for a funny action shot =) Also not sure if you can do it on the D3100 or not but if you can set it to take multiple shots per timer that would be best.
1
First off, I wouldn’t recommend auto mode if you’re shooting outside and it is sunny. It will almost definitely give a horrible whtie balance, and/or exposure too.
I would recommend trying to get out of using auto mode, and using something like aperture priority, so you set the aperture and the camera does the rest.
I would also recommend getting into shade. There’s nothing worse than shooting in harsh sunlight – it will give horrible shadows on the faces, and will mess around with the exposure as I said above. Just find a big tree, or something to stand under which will give you even light all over.
Another thing you need to watch out for is to not shoot into the sun. Always take photos with the sun behind you, if you’re doing portraits. Otherwise you could be getting the sun whiting out half of somebody’s face, or it will be very distracting in the final photo.
One last thing, make sure you get the angle straight on when doing portraits, as not a lot of people like it when you get down low, beneath their chin, or up high.
I hope this helped and good luck.
1
I will try the aperture priority out, thanks. I practiced yesterday in bright sun with the manual mode and got some good shots. I think we will go later in the day and stick to the shade.
0
suzy,
With outdoor portraits, I think your depth of field is extremely important. You want your subject to be the focus of the shot, so a good dof that has the person’s face in focus but the background not so much in focus is very important. That is, if you want it to be a portrait and not a landscape or scenery shot so use whatever lens you have that gives you the best dof while maintaining good clarity and focus on your subject.
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