There are plenty of people in the world who like and use flash photography effectively, but as a rule of thumb I prefer to avoid it whenever possible. I am not a professional photographer (at best I’d consider myself semi-pro as I’ve been paid occasionally to shoot here and there) therefore haven’t the will or the means to invest in professional grade lighting with multiple flashes, reflecting screen, etc. So, rather than trying to control light, I adapt to it by attempting to make the most of the available lighting. Here are some things I look at when I start to take portraits as such.

1.) In low-light settings such as with night photography, interior lighting, candles, or seasonal lights such as Christmas lights, I usually get as close to the light source as possible. Sometimes, I like to include the light source in the shot as a foreground element to help enhance the depth-of-field or set the mood for the shot. This is particularly nice with Christmas trees, lights, and candles. Interior lights can be harsh if they are overhead, so I will opt for lamp light if it is available for indoor portraits. In this case, I try and fill the frame with the subjects face and not include the light source.  Be careful not to get too close, especially with wide aperture lenses because the focus will fall off rather quick! I’m can count  how many shots I’ve thrown away because my depth of field was too shallow because I was too close! I shot this image in a cathedral lit mainly by candles. I bumped the ISO on the camera up and shot at f/2.8 with the candles in the foreground to help capture the reverential setting of the building.

2.) When shooting in bright sunlight such as outdoors or indoors next to windows and doors, I opt for shady areas to eliminate shadows. With windows and doors, having the subject stand next to the window or door can cast shadows across his or her face to create some drama in the shot. In the evenings and mornings, a sunset or sunrise can offer the same sort of effect. Also, bright sunlight can be used a back-light such that the background is overexposed but the subject it properly exposed. This gives sort of an ethereal effect. In this shot, I intentionally made the couple out of focus to give a silhouette-like effect and make the shot feel more dreamy.

3.)As with all photography, don’t be afraid to mess up, and shoot lots of the same pose. I try for quality and quantity to maximize getting good shots

4.) Because natural light is not always even like controlled light, I find it quintessential to focus and meter on the subjects eyes or cheeks.  Most cameras nowadays have some sort of facial detection built in which the camera uses to adjust the metering of the shot. DSLR’s nowadays having spot-metering which meters the image to a selection within a frame rather than the whole frame, which I use in portraiture. Backgrounds in portraits are, generally speaking, distracting, so under or over exposing them can actually help the portrait. I think I was a little too close on this shot, but it was a fun grab. I metered on her eyes.

5.)For this type of portraiture, as most all types, prefer a wide aperture (that is a low “f” number) and medium to long zoom to help increase the perceived depth of field. I typically shoot portraits at f/1.8-3.2 and use a 50mm prime or a zoom lens between 50mm and 100mm. This varies with cameras. I have a 50D with an APC sized sensor so the equivalent zoom for a “full frame” camera is something like 70-160mm at the same aperture settings. On point and shoot, the focal length may be between 25mm and 50mm.

These tips certainly aren’t gospel, just things that I do when I’m doing portraits. I hope that you find these helpful and happy shooting!

Here’s a picture of me photographing myself photographing myself… I set my 50D on a tripod and set it in “Live Preview” setting it up to take a picture of me in a mirror. I then used my other camera to take a picture of that setup, this me taking a picture of myself taking a picture of myself.

Me Photographing Myself Photographing Myself

Pseudo high dynamic range photos are really nothing more than a single exposure processed as an HDR. There are other guides on how to do this but I am going to describe the process I’ve found that I think works pretty well, at least in my humble opinion. This little guide assumes nothing about software, but points out principles I think may help enhance your pseudo HDR experience.

The first thing you’ll want to do is select or take a good candidate photo for processing.

• A good candidate photo should be well exposed—that is there are not a lot of blacked out or burned out spots on the image. HDR images attempt to prevent this from happening by merging images together. Just about any image that is well exposed can be used, although you may be able to get away with a poorly exposed image.
  • If you look at the tone curve below, you see two peaks and a valley. If the tone curve contains peaks or valleys that are flat, then the image is probably blacked out or burned out.
  • Most cameras nowadays have a way to see the tone curve while you are shooting the image, or right after you’ve shot the image.
• If possible, shoot the photo in a RAW format so that the camera does not do any processing to the image.
• You’ll want a low ISO too.

I shot this image at as a RAW file at ISO 100. This is the image with no processing save a resize and conversion to a JPEG, but even conversion to a JPEG does  alter it some.

Pseudo HDR Original Image

Flat Tone Curve

The next step you’ll want to do is to “flatten” the image. An image that is flat is an image that seems to lack contrast such that the colors look washed out. The human eye has a tendency to gravitate towards localized contrast, and images that don’t have such are typically described as flat. RAW images right off a camera almost always look flat without some sort of post processing. Images converted to JPEG usually go through some sort of algorithm to make the image look more natural, typically done by adding more contrast. The white line represents the bias by which the photo processing software is altering the photo. This line is straight (i.e. flat) while the human eye sees things in more of an “S” shape with the line flattening out at the top and bottom.

• If your image is flat already, you may not need to do any post processing.
• If the image has light and dark areas you may want do some post processing to flatten the image more.
• Add fill light if there are dark spots. You may want to decrease the overall contrast of the image and tweak the brightness some.
• If the image was shot at a high ISO, you’ll probably want to run a noise reduction algorithm to smooth this out some. Some HDR processes can really expose noise even at low ISOs.

Pseudo HDR Flattened Image

Once the image is flat, you’ll want to save it as a 16 bit TIFF or something that supports a higher bit range than 8 bit because tone mapping attempts to compress higher dynamic range images into lower range images, typically by reducing the color information. 16 bit TIFF files store enough information for most modern cameras.

After saving the image, you can process it like any other image that was produced using HDR, so fire up you’re HDR program and start tweaking the image with tone mapping!

Pseudo HDR Image

After I ran this image through Qtpfsgui (a free HDR workflow), I rotated and cropped it some to come up with this image.

Pseudo HDR Final Image

I shot this one using a “nifty fifty” at f/2, 19 exposures stacked using Deepsky Stacker.

St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.

Carlo Maderno’s Fountain in St. Peter’s Square, Vatican City