Another Five Tips to Add Interest to Your Portraits!
Five more liberating techniques from the people who brought you Five Quick Tips to Add Interest to Your Portraits, and the acclaimed follow-up Five More Tips to Add Interest to Your Portraits… This time we’re looking at mixing things up a bit. Ways to break from the norm in order to blow off the cobwebs and reconnect with your mojo… All of these are tried and tested by me, after my mojo recently went walkabout and I had to track it down. (I found it in a pub drinking a pint of Mild and eating peanuts…).
1) Focus Schmocus!
Try rebelling against that photographic instinct to ensure that focus is precise and perfect. Instead try setting your camera (or lens) to Manual Focus, open up the aperture and take a purposely out of focus photo! The results can be surprisingly good (especially with some back-lighting…)
Photo: P.Broome; Camera: 400D; f/5.0, 1/200sec, ISO100
Alternatively, try manually focusing on the background in your shot instead of the subject…
Photo: P.Broome; Camera: 400D; f/4.0, 1/30sec, ISO100
2) Wiggle It!
Use a combination of long exposure and off-camera flash to create a combination of motion and frozen image. Meter your exposure (in a fairly dull light) without the flash, then use it anyway (note, you will probably need to be in either Manual, Shutter Priority or Aperture Priority modes for this to work). This way you’ll get motion trails but the portion of the image captured when the flash fires will dominate. For example…..
Photo: P.Broome; Camera: 400D; f/5.0, 6sec, ISO100
Most flashes can be set to either first or second/rear curtain sync – the basic difference being, with first curtain sync the flash fires as the shutter opens, with second/rear curtain sync it fires just before the shutter closes. Second curtain is useful if you’re shooting light trails and you want to freeze the object that is leaving them (i.e. a car) at the end (otherwise the light trails would be moving in front of the object). But with portraiture it’s easier to stick to first curtain – then you know that when you press the shutter the flash will fire.
3) Multiples In One Frame!
When you fire a flash in an otherwise dark frame, you are almost taking a photograph within a photograph… so if you set up a long exposure (say a few seconds or so) in a dark room (if it’s not dark then close down your aperture until you get a suitably dark result) – but don’t meter for the darkness, take a test shot and make sure all you capture is a black frame. Now hold a flash in your hand (finger poised over the test flash button) – release the shutter on the camera and fire the flash, then move slightly and fire it again (once it’s recharged and before the shutter closes). Rather than capturing the motion (as above), you will have captured two distinct still images (as below).
Photo: P.Broome; Camera: 400D; f/8.0, 6sec, ISO100
As with the previous technique, this is very much a hit and miss process – but when it works, it can be quite special. Firing the flash on one side of the face, and then the other (and only moving fractionally) can produce some particularly interesting results…
Photo: P.Broome; Camera: 400D; f/10, 2.5sec, ISO100
4) Crash Zoom (Take Me to the Moon)!
It’s an old favourite, but that doesn’t make it any less kickass – especially when coupled with off-camera flash again (to freeze the initial image). It can be tricky to pull this off in self-portraits… but worthwhile! Once again it relies on a long exposure – just fire your shutter and zoom out (or in) before the shutter closes.
Photo: P.Broome; Camera: 400D; f/22, 1/30sec, 100
5) Get Abstract!
This one’s kind of a cheat – more of an amalgamation of all of the above, and a philosophy really. But who says a portrait has to be this or that? Go crazy! Set your flashes up back to front, forget the focus, forget the metering, stick your finger up at the expert guides – just point your camera randomly and see what crazyshit you get!
Obviously, I don’t recommend this technique if you’re being paid for a shoot (unless it’s what was requested)… it’s more of a great way to blow out the cobwebs when you want to try something different (a problem that every one who attempts the 365 days project encounters at some time or another). Very liberating.
Photo: P.Broome; Camera: 400D; f/2.8, 1/250sec, ISO100
If you’re currently experiencing an absence of mojo, I hope one or all of these techniques will at least give you something to try while you wait for it to return 
Let us know how you get on, and pass on your own mojo-rediscovery techniques (if you’re willing to share them!)
Very interesting read, as I’ve enjoyed your journey into the weird lately, and the shots above are so cool. It certainly makes for a great experiment for those of us (me included) that are fairly new to flash photography, and a great example that it’s always more fun to break the rules than to follow them!