THE ART OF PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY
I’ve wanted to write this post for a while and I finally had a bit of time to put it together. I am a custom photographer which means that no two clients will ever have the same image…the same combination of location, wardrobe, props, posing and expressions. Here’s a great article about custom photography from a consumer’s standpoint why you should choose a skilled custom professional to photograph your family.
Professional Child Photographer – The Consumer Guide for Custom Photography
Capturing your adorable kiddo’s smiling face is my job and I use all of the tricks in my bag and do our best to get the full breadth of your child’s giggles and grins. While coaxing those charming expressions out of your child my other job is to coax the camera to capture them in the best way possible. It’s a chaotic choreography of entertaining kids while manipulating a half dozen camera settings and keeping a creative eye on the viewfinder. If a photographer captures your child’s absolute best expression, but completely underexposes the image you’re left with a lesser quality image than you’ve paid for.
My hope is that this after reading this post you will be a better informed customer and have a better idea of what to look for while shopping for a photographer; that you’ll look at their work with a critical eye, watching for both great expressions AND great exposures.
I’ve already posted the unprocessed and processed versions of the image in this post. In my previous post I was showing off my kids and discussing the images and my processing methods. In this post I want to demonstrate some common image issues and what to look for when choosing a photographer. Whether you’re hiring a custom photographer, chain studio, department store or someone else it’s your money and your memories being captured. It’s your hard earned money and you deserve the best portraits your money can buy.
In the following images I have simulated some common image and processing issues.
The original, unprocessed image.
An underexposed image. See how dark Juliet is? “It’s too dark” is the simple version. Details in shadow / dark areas have been lost.
An overexposed image. The opposite of underexposed, now we’ve lost detail in highlight / bright areas. “It’s too bright” or “blown out”.
Some examples of poor color or white balance. The most obvious effect of poor white balance means that things that should be white end up looking yellow or blue… but the rest of the color spectrum shifts along with it and the result is that nothing in the image appears to be the color that it really is. Skilled photographers will carefully adjust white balance to achieve the most accurate colors. The first image is “too warm” (whites appear yellow) and the second is “too cold” (whites appear blue.)
Sharpness. Many things contribute to how sharp an image is. No matter the cause, if an image isn’t sharp, it’s not a keeper. No good photographer will even show you an image that isn’t sharp. Parts of the image that should be crisp and detailed are soft and blurry. The larger the image is printed, the more pronounced that lack of sharpness becomes. When you look at the image below you can see that it’s ‘soft’ …
Now a closer look. As you enlarge the image the softness becomes much more obvious. The same happens with prints. What might look “OK” on a small preview on a website can look very soft when printed. This image is just a closer look at the soft image above compared to what it should look like.
Over processing. You know what they say about too much of a good thing. Post-processing is a critical stage of a photographer’s work (and one that usually takes more time than the actual photo session, believe it or not.) The tools available are powerful and can really put the finishing touch on an image… but it’s easy to get carried away. I call this example “glowing eyes”. Clear, bright, natural eyes can be captured with carefully selected camera settings and lighting. My goal is for the portrait of your child to resemble your actual child. Unless your child is a cat, his/her eyes shouldn’t “glow”.
A few days ago a dear friend was (reluctantly) showing me photos of her children taken at a major department store photography studio. She was embarrassed to show them to me and explained that she just wanted some quick shots of the kids that day. My response: “There is ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong with that!” I must admit that the exposures were pretty decent, though I can’t speak to the sharpness since I only saw wallet size prints. She got exactly what she was looking for that day – some quick, sweet photographs of her beautiful kids that she can pass around at the dinner table.
I’m a realist. I know that I cannot single-handedly photograph the entire city of Houston or even my entire circle of friends and acquaintances. I tell my friends that at the end of the day the most important thing is that they photograph their children. They grow and change too quickly and some of the only things we have to hold onto are the memories captured in our photographs.
There are countless photographers out there with varying skill sets and endless amounts of talent. Professional Photographers of America is a great resource for finding a Professional Photographer. They have a “find a photographer” function on their site. Browse, research, talk to your friends and explore all of your options and choose the photographer that’s right for your family. Enjoy!
