Portraits are the most common type of photographs. We’d like to share some of our know-how for taking better people pictures.

Lighting Tricks Portraits are usually composed using soft, even lighting. However, you can put strong and high contrast lighting to good use by carefully posing your subject.
This photo was taken in the shade where the light was soft. This type of lighting made the young girl’s skin tones equally soft.	Here, I’ve placed the subject in a location that has strong side lighting. I like the effect on the highlighted side of the face. Take care not to overexpose the highlights.

Taking pictures of kids is one of the most popular uses for digital cameras. From time to time, we’ll present tips for taking better kids pictures.

Fill the Frame When shooting portraits, the usual tendency is to carefully frame the subject in the viewfinder.
In this snapshot, we’ve left an even border around the head and upper body of the child. It makes for a nicely framed shot although the background is a little distracting.	For this shot, we moved in closer to fill the viewfinder with the child’s head. There is almost no border around the photo, yielding a more dramatic view of the child.

When your subject is moving, the usual way to capture the action is to use a short shutter speed. This freezes the action, but is there a better way to “show” the action?

Capturing the motion
By using a short shutter speed, you can freeze the action of your subject. For this shot, I’ve used Sport mode to stop the motion of our young girl.	By deliberately using a short shutter speed e.g. 1/30th or 1/15th of a second, I’ve captured the subject as she’s moving. While the young girl is no longer in sharp focus, we can almost feel the swinging motion.

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