portraits
Lightroom Quickie: Soften Skin
This tip is actually specific to Lightroom 2 – as it uses the Adjustment Brush, which of course wasn’t present in Lightroom 1. If you’ve yet to upgrade from 1 to 2, I personally think the Adjustment Brush alone is reason to do so – it’s such a versatile, easy-to-use and yet powerful tool!
Soften Skin in action with overlay
Soften Skin is one of the presets on the Adjustment Brush – and it’s quite well hidden, which is a shame as it’s a great feature!
Open a shot to work on, and go to the Develop pane, then click on the Adjustment Brush tool (the far right one of the five icons under the histogram – looks kind of like a thermometer on its side).
Once selected, a new set of menu options appear below – click on the arrows next to the current Effect to get a drop down list of effects and presets. Select Soften Skin from the list.
Now you could just go ahead and paint over the areas of skin you want to soften – but it can be difficult to see which areas you’ve selected. So instead I recommend that you press O before you start painting, as this will turn on the Overlay option, which makes everything MUCH easier! Now go ahead and paint the areas you want to soften – obviously just select skin, not hair, eyes or lips – if you go over the edge and want to delete a small area of selection, just press and hold the Alt key and paint over the area you want to delete.
Once you’ve finished your selection press O again to turn off the overlay and see the effect applied. The default full Amount of 100 can be a little obvious at times, so try lowering it until you get the desired combination of softened and natural (I find a figure of around 60 to 80 looks natural, but flattering).
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
Flash Light: Direction Equals Mood!
1: 5º angle from camera
55º angle from camera
100º angle from camera
140º angle from camera
I thought I’d have a very quick play around today, with my Speedlite 580EXII flash handheld (fired by the Canon ST-E2 IR transmitter – which, of course, you won’t need if you’ve got a Nikon with it’s fancypants built in flash control system…). I just wanted to show how much the direction of your off-camera flash – in relation to the subject – impacts on the mood of a shot.
The shots here were taken one after another, with exactly the same exposure settings (“cabin crew, set cameras to Manual – thank you”) – f/5.6 and 1/160sec – the only difference is that I moved the flash about 30-50º between shots (holding it in my right hand). But, I think you’ll agree, that one small difference makes a HUGE difference to the final outcome! So think carefully above your flash placement 
5 MORE Tips To Add Interest To Your Portraits
I thought today I’d finish off the portrait tips I posted at the beginning of the week. Once again I’m not going into much detail, the purpose of this post is just to give a taster of different techniques and to get your own creative juices pumping. This is all about giving a twist or a bit of spice to your portraits.
6. Camera Position
Experiment with your camera at different heights in relation to your subject(s) to get a different point of view. Shooting from a low or high perspective is also a great way to adding leading lines into a shot.
threehundredandthirtythree by Simon Pollock (gtvone)
7. Eyes
A good pair of eyes can make a portrait, they can convey so much and hide so little. Play with eye contact between lens and subject but also try portraits where your subjects attention is elsewhere maybe looking away from camera.
Girl and Dolly by Louise Turner (Susan & her 5d)
5 Quick Tips To Add Interest To Your Portraits
Today I thought I’d pen out some quick tips which may give you some ideas to add variety into your portraits. Traditional portraits have their place but sometimes something a bit more creative or with a twist can have much more impact. Some of the examples I’ve used are self-portraits but the idea could equally apply to shooting other people. I’ve not really gone into much detail, I’m hoping that this post serves as more a spark of inspiration more than an in-depth guide.
1. Selective Framing and Cropping
Experiment with framing the shot so only part of your subject is revealed. This adds a bit of mystery and intrigue. You could also maybe stray from faces altogether and take pictures of just someone’s hands of feet.
day:2 by bigcrustyape (Nathan Pask)
