Note: It’s a travel day for me today, so enjoy this post from the archives on portrait photography - one of the first articles that made it on the Cheapshooter site.

What is the most photographed subject in the world? People. Everyone is a portrait photographer, from the budding amateur with the point-and-shoot digital camera to the most advanced professional shooting photographs for the biggest magazines in the world. No matter who you are or where you are, there’s always demand for good portrait photography.

It’s unfair that portrait photography isn’t usually considered to be particularly difficult. All you do is get someone in front of the camera and click the shutter, right? Wrong. The masters of portrait photography construct their photo down to the tiniest detail and the smallest ray of light. Everything in the frame is accounted for and controlled, making the resulting photograph something more similar to a painting than a typical photo. Portrait photography is an exacting art that takes years to master, along with thousands of dollars of studio equipment, lenses and cameras.

Why should we care? The vast majority of photographers – me included – will never have the budget or time necessary to truly master portrait photographer. But it’s important to remember that portrait photography is an art to be respected. Like anything else, there’s technique and skill involved that can take a portrait from the mundane to something that can truly be treasured.

Here are nine simple techniques to help take your portrait photography to the next level without costing you a dime more than you’ve already spent. If you have nearly any digital camera that has come out in the last few years, you have more than enough to shoot great portrait photography. Start putting these 11 techniques into practice, and you’ll see an immediate difference in your results.

Don’t get stuck in the middle of the frame

This is Photography 101 material, but it is still worth a mention because it remains a weakness of many nascent photographers today. Generally, centering your subject in the middle of the frame is a bad idea. It can work well in some instances, but symmetry is usually not your friend.

Get familiar with the rule of thirds. Imagine a 3×3 grid overlaying your photograph, dividing it both lengthwise and widthwise. You want to place your subject on the intersection of any two of these lines. This keeps your subject out of the center of the photograph and adds an element of visual interest to your result. If you aren’t thinking about this, start now. It will make a world of difference in your portrait photography.

Get close. No, still closer. Closer. There. That’s it.

All the ingredients can be in place for a great portrait. The light is right, the setting is beautiful, your subject is posed and ready. But when you get the photograph back, the person is lost in the background. Why? You didn’t get close enough.

The prevailing trend in photography right now is to get tight. Look in any newspaper or magazine – there’s very little wasted space in an image. In most circumstances, a portrait will have a lot more impact if the subject fills or nearly fills the whole photo.

But Dan…how can I do this and still obey the rule of thirds? Simple. Place your subject’s eyes on the intersection of one of the grid lines. This keeps the portrait from being too symmetrical.

Start noticing the quality of the light around you

One good piece of advice that I received is to think about your photograph as a collection of layers. Composition is just one piece of the result. Light is another. You can be in the most beautiful place in the world and have the most beautiful model. Your composition can be perfect. But if the light isn’t right, your portrait photography will suffer.

Start noticing the quality of light in your everyday light. Notice how the light changes with the weather and with the time of day. Look at how shadows are cast across people’s faces. All these attributes will affect your portrait photography, so you need to have a solid understanding of how they work.

As a general rule, the best natural light occurs in the hour after sunrise and before sunset. During this time, the light appears almost golden and is less direct. Use this to your advantage. I guarantee you that some of the best portrait photography is shot during these hours.

Diffusion is your friend

For most portrait photography, harsh lighting is not good. Portraits really shine when subjects are evenly lit without dark shadows crossing their face. Shadows enhance wrinkles and other signs of aging and are generally unflattering. So avoid them.

There’s one easy way to find diffused lighting — wait for overcast days. They are perfect occasions for b asic portrait photography. This may seem counterintuitive, but as long as you aren’t counting on the sky as the background for your portrait, you’ll quickly learn to love the clouds. Clouds act as a giant softbox, diffusing and softening the quality of the sunlight to make a nice, even result. Next time it is overcast, look around. Notice that objects cast very little shadow. That will act to your benefit in portrait photography. You lose some contrast, but gain a whole lot in terms of ease of lighting.

Start using your flash

When harsh lighting is unavoidable, it’s time to break out the flash. Many photographers neglect flash photography on sunny days, but they are losing one of the important tools of portrait photography. Using the flash in harsh daylight - a technique called fill flash — will soften the shadows in your portrait and produce a much more pleasing result. The flash included on most digital cameras is enough to have a small effect on your portrait photography, but the possibilities become endless with more powerful, off-camera flashes. Flashes are the only lighting you can control in outdoor, portrait photography. Use it to your advantage.

Lower your aperature

This is one of the simplest ways to make your portrait photography look more professional in a hurry. Aperture refers to the width of the opening in the lens that admits light to the sensor. Larger aperture numbers, perhaps counterintuitively, mean a smaller lens opening. Large aperture numbers - F/6 and higher - mean the photograph has a larger depth-of-field. This means more of the image is in focus and sharp. For landscape photography, that’s desirable but not so for portrait photography. You want your subject to pop out of the background, and large aperture numbers create too much distracting detail in the background. Lowering the aperture blurs the background - an effect dubbed bokeh.

Most digital cameras have a mode that allows the photographer to set the aperture of the lens. Many consumer digital cameras aren’t capable of going lower than F/4 or so, but even this is enough to make you notice a difference. Lowering the aperture also increases the maximum shutter speed possible, making it easier to shoot portraits without a tripod. Unless you are trying some creative portrait photography, a lower aperture is generally a good idea.

Change the angle of attack

The vast majority of portrait photography is shot straight on. While this isn’t necessarilly a bad thing in and of itself, it doesn’t result in images that are distinctive. So change the angle. Crouch down and shoot your photograph looking up at your subject. Get a little higher and shoot your photograph looking down. The change in perspective, if nothing else, will add a different element to your portraits. But be careful - don’t shoot from two extreme of angle. Shooting from too far up will emphasize the size of your subject’s forehead, and you may be looking up someone’s nose if you get too low. Slight variations are the key.

Think about what the photo says

Sometimes all you want is a nice-looking photo of a person. That’s fine, but portraits can be more than that. Any photojournalist will tell you that what a photo says is even more important than how a photo looks. For portrait photography, you don’t need to hold yourself to such a high standard. But it is something important to keep in mind.

Take this image of a professor. I was assigned to shoot this photograph, and I wanted to make it something special since I knew it would be running on the front page of my newspaper the next day. I applied the approach I’ve outlined above until I was happy with the lighting and the composition. But it still needed something else. The story my photo was for was about the professor being denied tenure and her fight to remain at the university. As I lined up to shoot again, I noticed the text on the blackboard behind her. Survival. Resistance. By stepping back and including that element in the final portrait, I had an image that was a lot more powerful than just a headshot alone.

Always be thinking about what your portraits can say. This makes the final result that much more personal - and that much more cool.

Practice your portrait photography

Nothing will improve your portrait photography like taking more portraits. It’s the only surefire way to get better. Cajole your friends to stand in front of a camera for thirty minutes and just keep shooting. Take pictures of your friend’s kids. Set the camera on a tripod and shoot photos of yourself. Anything works - just keep practicing. In time, you’ll develop an intuitive feel for how the camera, light and person all come together to make a memorable portrait. Keep shooting - and use my tips above - and I think you’ll start to see some changes.

Good luck! If you have any tips on how to improve portrait photography - or disagree with anything I’ve said - leave a note in the comments. I’m all ears.

Thanks to Flickr users Rachel Sian, Trois Tetes, Sukanto Debnath, Alidarbac, Nomethod, Wishy Mom, and eScapes Photo for their fantastic examples of portrait photography used in this piece. All images were licensed under the Creative Commons license, and they retain the original rights to their images.

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