Adding a Third Person

A group portrait of three is still small and intimate. It lends itself well to a pyramid- or diamond-shaped composition, or an inverted triangle, all of which are pleasing to the eye. 

Don’t simply adjust the height of the faces so that each is at a different level; turn the shoulders of those at either end of the group in toward the central person as a means of looping the group together. You can also try creating a diagonal line with the faces at different heights and all the people in the group touching. 

Or, create a bird’s-eye view—cluster the group together, grab a stepladder or other high vantage point, and you’ve got a lovely arrangement. It’s what photographer Norman Phillips calls “a bouquet.”

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Posing Couples

The simplest of groups is one with just two people. Whether it’s a bride and groom, mom and dad, or the best man and maid of honor, the basic building blocks call for one person slightly higher than the other. A good starting point is to position the mouth of the lower person even with the forehead of the higher person.
Although they can be posed in parallel position (both subjects facing the same direction), a more interesting dynamic can be achieved by having them pose at 45-degree angles to each other, so their shoulders face in toward one another. With this pose you can create a number of variations by moving them closer or farther apart.
Another intimate pose is to have two profiles facing each other. One should still be higher than the other, as this allows you to create an implied diagonal line between their eyes, which also gives the portrait direction. Since this type of image is fairly close up, make sure that the frontal planes of the subjects’ faces are roughly parallel so that you can hold the focus on both.

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Put the Weight on the Back Foot

The basic rule of thumb is that no one should be standing at attention with both feet together. Instead, the shoulders should be at a slight angle to the camera, as previously described, and the front foot should be brought forward slightly. The subject’s weight should always be on the back foot. This has the effect of creating a bend in the front knee and dropping the rear shoulder to a position lower than the forward one. When used in full-length bridal portraits, a bent forward knee will lend an elegant shape to the dress. With one statement, “Weight on your back foot, please,” you can introduce a series of dynamic lines into an otherwise average composition.
By raising the camera height in a three-quarter- or full-length portrait, you enlarge the head-and-shoulders region of the subject, but slim the hips and legs. Conversely, lowering the camera reduces the size of the head, but enlarges the legs and thighs. Tilting the camera down when raising the camera (and up when lowering it) increases these effects. Also, the closer the camera is to the subject, the more pronounced the changes are. If you find that, after you adjust camera height for a desired effect, there is no change, move the camera in closer to the subject and observe the effect again.
When you raise or lower the camera in a head-and-shoulders portrait, the effects are even more dramatic. Raising the camera height lengthens the nose, narrows the chin and jaw line, and broadens the forehead. Lowering camera height shortens the nose, de-emphasizes the forehead, and widens the jaw line, while accentuating the chin.

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Evaluate the Arms and Hands

Arms. Subjects’ arms should generally not be allowed to fall to their sides, but should project outward to provide gently sloping lines and a “base” to the composition. This is achieved in a number of ways. For men, ask them to put their hands in their pockets; for women, ask them to bring their hands to their waist (whether they are seated or standing). Remind them that there should be a slight space between their upper arms and their torsos. This triangular base in the composition visually attracts the viewer’s eye upward, toward the face, and also prevents subjects from appearing to have flat and flabby arms.

Hands. Posing hands properly can be very difficult because, in most portraits, they are closer to the camera than the subject’s head and thus appear larger. One thing that will give hands a more natural perspective is to use a longer-than-normal lens. Although holding the focus on both the hands and face is more difficult with a longer lens, the size relationship between them will appear more natural. If the hands are slightly out of focus, this is not as crucial as when the eyes or face are soft.

One basic rule is never to photograph a subject’s hands pointing straight into the camera lens. This distorts the size and shape of the hands. Always have the hands at an angle to the lens. Another basic is to photograph the outer edge of the hand whenever possible. This gives a natural, flowing line to the hand and wrist and eliminates distortion that occurs when the hand is photographed from the top or head-on. Try to raise the wrist slightly so there is a gently curving line where the wrist and hand join. Additionally, you should always try to photograph the fingers with a slight separation in between them. This gives them form and definition. When the fingers are closed, there is no definition.

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Watch the Eyes and Smile

The Eyes. The best way to keep your subject’s eyes active and alive is to engage them in conversation. Look at the person while you are setting up and try to find a common frame of interest. Inquire about the other person— almost everyone loves to talk about themselves! If the person does not look at you when you are talking, he or she is either uncomfortable or shy. In either case, you have to work to relax the person. Try a variety of conversational topics until you find one he or she warms to and then pursue it. As you gain their interest, you will take the subject’s mind off of the photograph. One of the best ways to enliven your subject’s eyes is to tell an amusing story. If they enjoy it, their eyes will smile—one of the most endearing expressions a human being can make.
Start the formal session by having the person look at you. Using a cable release with the camera tripod-mounted forces you to become the host and allows you to physically hold the subject’s gaze. It is a good idea to shoot a few frames of the person looking directly into the camera, but most people will appreciate some variety.
The Smile. One of the easiest ways to produce a natural smile is to praise your subject. Tell her how good she looks and how much you like a certain feature of hers—her eyes, her hair style, etc. To simply say “Smile!” will produce that familiar lifeless expression. By sincere confidence building and flattery, you will get the person to smile naturally and sincerely and their eyes will be engaged by what you are saying.
Remind the subject to moisten her lips periodically. This makes the lips sparkle in the finished portrait, as the moisture produces tiny specular highlights on the lips. Also, pay close attention to your subject’s mouth, making sure there is no tension in the muscles around it, since this will give the portrait an unnatural, posed look. Again, an air of relaxation best relieves tension, so talk to the person to take his or her mind off the photo.

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Choose a Portrait Length

Head and Shoulders. In a head-and-shoulders portrait, all of your camera technique will be evident, so focus is critical (start with the eyes) and the lighting must be flawless. Use changes in camera height to correct any irregularities. Often, head-and-shoulders portraits are of the face alone—as in a beauty shot. In such an image, it is important to have a dynamic element, like a diagonal line, to create visual interest. This can be the line of the eyes, the tilt of the head, or the line of the shoulders.
Three-Quarter and Full-Length Poses. When you employ a three quarter-length pose (showing the subject from the head to below the waist) or a full-length pose (showing the subject from head to toe), you have more of the body to contend with.
In these types of portraits, it is important to turn the body so that it is at an angle to the lens. Don’t photograph the person head-on, as this adds mass to the body. Also, your subject’s weight should be on their back foot (the foot farthest from the camera) rather than distributed evenly on both feet—or, worse yet, on the front foot. There should be a slight bend in the front knee if the person is standing. This helps break up the static line of a straight leg. The feet should also be at an angle to the camera; feet look stumpy when shot straight on.
When the subject is sitting, a cross-legged pose is effective. Have the top leg facing at an angle and not directly into the lens. When posing a woman who is seated, have her tuck the calf of the leg closest to the camera in behind the leg farthest from the camera. This reduces the size of the calves, since the leg that is farther from the camera becomes more prominent. Whenever possible, have a slight space between the subject’s leg and the chair, as this will slim down the thighs and calves.
In three-quarter images, you should never frame the portrait so that a joint—an elbow, knee, or ankle, for example—is cut off at the edge of the frame. This sometimes happens when a portrait is cropped. Instead, crop between joints, at mid-thigh or mid-calf, for example. When you break the composition at a joint, it produces a disquieting feeling. Consider the Facial Views
As mentioned previously, the head should be at a different angle than the shoulders. There are three basic head positions (relative to the camera) found in portraiture: the seven-eighths view, the three-quarter view, and the profile view. Knowing these positions will help you provide variety in your images. In group portraits, you may even end up using all three head positions in a single pose (the more people in the group, the more likely that becomes).

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Understand Posing Essentials

No matter what style of photography is being used, there are certain posing essentials that need to be at work otherwise your technique (or lack of it) will be obvious. The more you know about the rules of posing, and particularly the subtleties, the more you can apply to your wedding images. And the more you practice these principles, the more they will become second nature and a part of your overall technique.
Giving Directions. There are a number of ways to give posing instructions. You can tell your subjects what you want them to do, you can gently move them into position, or you can demonstrate the pose. The latter is perhaps the most effective, as it breaks down barriers of self-consciousness on both sides of the camera.

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Chimping: Evaluating an Image

The term “chimping” is attributed to USA Today sports photographer Robert Deutsch, who used it to describe the scene of multiple digital photographers, covering the 1999 US Open, simultaneously checking their LCDs after each backhand (as he writes, “all looking at their screens like monkeys”).
While the concept of “chimping” certainly has a derogatory feel to it, the practice of checking your LCD can be very useful. With higher resolution LCDs, larger screens, and more functions in the playback mode of the camera, there’s no reason you can’t use the LCD most of the time for evaluating images. For example, most professional DSLRs let you zoom and scroll across an image at high magnification to evaluate details. 

This will tell you if the image is sharp or not. Also, you can set certain playback presets to automatically indicate problems like clipped highlights (bright regions of the image in which no detail is present). With this feature, the clipped highlights blink on the LCD preview, so you can tell what areas were not properly exposed and how to remedy the situation.

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Watch the File Compression

Many file formats use compression to reduce file size. Loss less formats compress the file without removing image detail or color information. Lossy formats remove detail. Here are some common compression schemes:
LZW. LZW is a loss less compression strategy supported by TIFF, PDF, GIF, and PostScript language file formats. It provides the greatest reduction in file size when used for images that contain large areas of a single color.
JPEG. JPEG is a lossy compression strategy supported by JPEG, TIFF, PDF, and PostScript language file formats. When saving an image in the JPEG format in Photoshop, you can specify the level of compression by choosing an option from the Quality menu (in the JPEG Options dialog box). For the best results, always choose the highest image quality (a setting of 10 to 12).

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Adobe DNG Format

To resolve the disparity between the many proprietary RAW file formats (most camera manufacturer’s have their own format), Adobe Systems introduced an open RAW file format called the Digital Negative (DNG) format and is encouraging digital camera manufacturers and software developers to adopt the standard. Unlike many existing RAW formats, DNG was designed with enough built-in flexibility to incorporate all the image data and
Because there is less data preserved in this format, your exposure and white balance must be flawless.
Even wedding images that were originally recorded in RAW capture mode are often converted to JPEGs for uploading and printing. Photograph by Mark Cafeiro.

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Watch Your ISO Settings

In general, the higher the ISO setting on your camera, the more noise will be recorded. This is a condition, akin to visible grain in film photography, that occurs in digital imaging when stray electronic information affects the sensor sites. Fortunately, this is less of a problem than it once was. At this writing, the latest pro DSLRs from Nikon (D3) and Canon (EOS 1Ds Mark III) feature remarkably high ISOs and low noise. Nikon’s D3 even offers a black & white ISO setting that goes up to ISO 25,600 with remarkably low noise. Many DSLRs also feature specialized modes that automatically reduce noise in long-exposure situations. These settings are quite effective, regardless of ISO.

There are also a number of effective noise-reducing applications available for postproduction. Adobe Camera Raw features two types of noise reduction (one for color noise [chrominance] and one for black & white noise [luminance]) that can be applied in RAW file processing. Nik Software’s dFine 2.0 is another very sophisticated noise-reduction program that lets you reduce noise globally or selectively, targeting critical parts of the image.

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File Format: Speed vs. Versatility

RAW Files. RAW files retain the highest amount of image data from the original capture, so the files can be “fixed” to a much greater degree than JPEG files. However, if you are like most wedding photographers and need fast burst rates, RAW files will likely slow you down.RAW files will also fill up your storage cards much more quickly because of their larger file size. (Note: Because camera buffers and processing speeds have increased in size and performance, increasing numbers of professional wedding photographers are opting to shoot RAW files. If you know a situation is coming where you will need fast burst rates, you can always switch temporarily to the JPEG fine mode, and then back to RAW when the moment passes.)
Shooting in the RAW mode also requires the use of file-processing software to translate the file data into a useable format. This adds another step to your post production workflow, but provides valuable control over white balance, tint, exposure, brightness, contrast, saturation, luminance smoothing, color noise reduction, chromatic aberration, vignetting, tone curve (contrast control), shadow tint, and red, green, and blue saturation.
JPEG. Your other option is to shoot in the JPEG Fine mode (sometimes called JPEG Highest Quality). This creates smaller files, so you can save more images per media card and work much more quickly. Because of this increased speed and flexibility, many pros shoot in the JPEG Fine mode. Because there is less data preserved in this format, however, your exposure and white balance must be flawless. In short, the JPEG format is efficient, but it will reveal any weakness in your technique. (Note: Because the JPEG format compresses file information, the files are subject to degradation by repeated saving. If you shoot in JPEG mode, save your working copy of the file in the TIFF format [see page 42].)
Other Useful Formats. The JPEG 2000 format (supported by an option plug-in in Photoshop) provides more options and greater flexibility than the standard JPEG format. It offers optional lossless compression as well as 16-bit color/grayscale files, 8-bit transparency, and both alpha and spot channels can be saved. A very interesting feature of the JPEG 2000 format is that it supports using a Region of Interest (ROI) to minimize file size and preserve quality in critical areas of an image. By using an alpha channel, you can specify the region (ROI) where the most detail should be preserved, minimizing the compression (and loss of detail) in that area.
GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is a file format commonly used to display indexed-color graphics and images in hypertext markup language (HTML) documents over the Internet. GIF is an LZW-compressed format designed to minimize file size and electronic transfer time. The GIF format preserves transparency in indexed-color images; however, it does not support alpha channels.
TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) files are lossless, meaning that they do not degrade in image quality when repeatedly opened and closed. This is a very flexible image format supported by virtually all painting, imageediting, and page-layout applications. Also, virtually all desktop scanners can produce TIFF files. Photoshop can save layers in a TIFF file; however, if you open the file in another application, only the flattened image is visible. Photoshop can also save annotations, transparency, and multi-resolution pyramid data in TIFF format.

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The White Balance Saves Time

Choosing the right white-balance setting is particularly important if you are shooting JPEG files; it is less important when shooting in the RAW file mode, since these files contain more data than JPEGs and allow color imbalances to be easily remedied in post production. While this would seem to argue for shooting exclusively RAW files, it’s important to note that these files take up more room on media cards and require more time to write to the cards. As a result, many wedding photographers find it more practical to shoot JPEGs and perfect the color balance when creating the exposure.

A system that many pros follow is to take a custom white balance of a scene where they are unsure of the lighting mix. By selecting a white area in the scene and neutralizing it with a custom white-balance setting, you can be assured of an accurate color rendition. Others swear by a device known as the ExpoDisc (www.expodisc.com), which attaches to the the lens like a filter and is highly accurate in most situations .

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Select the Optimal Color Space

Many DSLRs allow you to shoot in the Adobe RGB 1998 or sRGB color space. There is considerable confusion over which is the “right” choice. Adobe RGB 1998 is a wider gamut color space than sRGB, so many photographers reason that this is the best option. Professional digital-imaging labs, however, use sRGB for their digital printers. Therefore, photographers working in Adobe 1998 RGB may be somewhat disheartened when their files are reconfigured and output in the narrower sRGB color space. As a result, many photographers use the Adobe 1998 RGB color space right up to the point that files are sent to a printer or out to the lab for printing.
Is there ever a need for other color spaces? Yes. It depends on your particular workflow. For example, all the images you see in this book have been converted from their native sRGB or Adobe 1998 RGB color space to the CMYK color space for photomechanical printing. As a general preference, I prefer images from photographers be in the Adobe 1998 RGB color space, as they seem to convert more naturally to CMYK.

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Michael O’Neill on Exposure

Example, if using a 100mm lens, use 1/100 second (or the next highest equivalent shutter speed, like 1/125 ) under average conditions. Some photographers are able to handhold their cameras for impossibly long exposures, like 1/4 or 1/2 second. To do this, you must practice good breathing and shooting techniques. With the handheld camera laid flat in the palm of your hand and your elbows in against your body, take a deep breath and hold it. Do not exhale until you’ve squeezed the shutter. Spread your feet like a tripod and if you are near a doorway, lean against it for additional support.

According to Michael O’Neill, “My digital camera [a Nikon D2X] is set in the manual-exposure mode about 90 percent of the time. My camera does not know that it is a digital camera with awesome 3D Color Matrix metering capabilities. It does, however, know how to record a properly lit and exposed scene the same way my film cameras did. My trusty Minolta flash meter still occupies a readily accessible spot in my camera bag and gets pulled out for ambient light or manual electronic flash readings many times throughout the wedding day. I usually start my day metering the light falling through an appropriate window at the bride’s

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Choose the Right Aperture

The closer you are to your subjects, with any lens, the less depth of field you will have at any given aperture. When you are shooting a tight image of faces, be sure that you have enough depth of field at your working lens aperture to hold the focus on all the faces. At wide lens apertures, you will need to focus very carefully to keep the eyes, lips, and tip of the nose critically sharp. This is where a good working knowledge of your lenses is essential. Some lenses will have the majority (two thirds) of their depth of


field behind the point of focus; others will have the majority (two thirds) of their depth of field in front of the point of focus. In most cases, depth of field is split 50–50, half in front of and half behind the point of focus.

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