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Quick Tips for Shooting Better Portraits
Before we get to the challenges for this chapter, I thought it might be a good idea to dis-
cuss some tips that don’t necessarily have anything specific to do with your camera. There
are entire books that cover things like portrait lighting, posing, and so on. But here are a
few pointers that will make your people photos look a lot better.
Beautiful black-and-white portraits
Sometimes a portrait just looks better in black
and white—we see more of the person and
their expression rather than their surround-
ings or the color of their clothing (
Figure
4.15). You can change the picture style to
Monochrome in your camera so that you are
photographing the image in black and white,
but when you do this and shoot in JPEG-only
mode, you are giving yourself only one option.
If you decide you liked it better in color, you
have no way to change it back.
I prefer to do all of my black-and-white
conversions while editing the photo on my
computer, and I encourage you to do the same.
You can make black-and-white conversions,
along with many other types of adjustments
to your images, using the Canon Digital Photo
Professional software on the disc included
with your camera. Another option is to play
with the 70D’s “Grainy Black and White”
Creative filter. More info on this feature is
detailed in Chapter 10, “Advanced Techniques.”
Figure 4.15
A black-and-white portrait eliminates
the distraction of color and puts all the emphasis
on the subject.
ISO 100 • 1/125 sec. • f/5.6 • 50mm lens
