Image 1
1/60th of a second

Conscious use of the shutter speed setting on your camera gives you the ability to get more creative with your photographs. Use a faster shutter speed and you’ll freeze action and get a sharp picture. Slow things down and you’ll get all or part of your image blurred and convey motion to the person looking at the photograph. This can be a powerful tool to help you tell the story behind the photo. But first, you’ve got to know what shutter speeds will give you the look you want. Read on.

Rule Of Thumb?

Image 2
1/30th of a second

Right about now you’re probably hoping for some sort of table that lists out shutter speeds, right? Well, unfortunately it’s not quite that simple. You see, unlike many other areas of photography where there are rules of thumb, this is one of those areas that requires experience and gut feeling. The reason is that the slower things are moving, the slower your shutter needs to be. Otherwise you won’t capture much motion. The best way I can think of to demonstrate this concept is through some photos. And I’ll use my favorite model for this article, my son.

Fast Motion

Let’s start out with the first image. This one is my boy on his first birthday, and he got to play with balloons for the first time. He was quite excited, and was whipping his arms around pretty wildly with those ribbons in his hands. I wanted to capture a little bit of that excitement, so I chose a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second, which was slow enough to get his arms blurred, but the rest of his body in sharp focus.

This article is part of the ‘Portrait Lighting For Beginners’ series. This series is meant to help you go from a beginning photographer to making beautiful portraits.

Image by johnlewis1513

Your first question right now is probably, “What the heck are these terms?” That’s understandable, especially if you’re new to portrait photography. So I’ll start this lesson by explaining what these poses are.

• Seven eighths view – This is a view of the subject that shows seven eighths of the subject’s face. Basically, this is a dead on view but with the face turned just slightly to one side.
• Three quarters view – This view shows three quarters of the subject’s face. Her face is turned 45 degrees from the camera and the far ear disappears from view.
• Two thirds view – This is probably the most commonly used facial position in portraiture. This is simply a position between seven eighths and three quarters. It provides for a nice comfortable pose without looking forced.

Lighting The Two Thirds And Three Quarters Views

This article isn’t just about telling you what these poses are. This is about telling you the best way to light them! Remember part six of this series on 45 degree lighting? If not, you might want to take a quick moment to go back and refresh your memory, because we’ll be using that idea again here.

This article is part of the ‘Portrait Lighting For Beginners’ series. This series is meant to help you go from a beginning photographer to making beautiful portraits.

Split lighting.
Clicky for larger

We continue our series on basic lighting setups with split lighting. Split lighting is simply lighting half of the subject’s face, while leaving the other half in complete shadow. This form of lighting creates a sense of drama in a portrait and really adds a little variety to a portfolio of images. While this isn’t my favorite of lighting setups, I do break it out from time to time to see what I’ll get. You can see here that even with a baby, you can create quite a mood with this type of lighting.

The image at left is another of my (then five month old) son. If you read the last section in this series on Profile Lighting, I told you that I caught my son in profile by mistake. This split lit shot was actually the shot I was going for when his little bobble head swung off in one direction to pay attention to God knows what, probably the cat.

Here’s how to set up a split lit shot.

This article is part of the ‘Portrait Lighting For Beginners’ series. This series is meant to help you go from a beginning photographer to making beautiful portraits.

Profile lighting

Next up in the series is profile lighting. This is a really simple lighting setup that really only requires one light, though you can add others if you want to. Like most lighting setups, feel free to add kickers, hair lights, whatever feels right to make your portraits pop!

Profile lighting isn’t used nearly as much as the other lighting setups. There are many reasons for this, but just to name a few, it can be less than flattering for many (think big noses) and just isn’t as visually interesting as some other setups. But used creatively, profile lighting can really make a great shot.

As I looked through my archives of photos, I realized I’m not a huge fan of this style, as this was the only shot in my entire collection. This shot only exists because my son moved his head right before taking the shot, and it came out as a profile shot. I need to make a point of dusting it off a little more often.

Here’s how to set it all up.

Sublime Light is a web site dedicated to teaching you to photograph people like a pro. For the latest articles, check out the home page.

Higher ratio (~7:1)
sebastian.yepes.in

Guess what…I hate it too!

As a photographer, sooner or later someone is going to use the term “lighting ratio” with you in a conversation. Many hobbiests don’t even know what this term means. In fact, many seasoned photographers still don’t have much of a grasp of what a lighting ratio is.

A lighting ratio is simply the difference in light level between the key (main) light and the fill light. Lighting ratios really only take into account two lights: the key light and the fill light. Any other lights you use in the image are simply accent lights that aren’t taken into account.

Here’s the simple formula:

Power output of first light divided by the second light times 1.695. That's it! So as long as you always keep a calculator in your camera bag, you're all set.

Now if you’re still with me, just forget that last paragraph of horse poo.