Author Archives: Clare Denman

Posing Tips for Portraits

Posing for portraits isn’t something I would call relaxing and as a photographer you want your clients to feel relaxed to get the best photos, so here are a few tips to help:

Try to build rapport with your clients, by asking them questions, keeping it light helps get that natural smile rather than a forced smile.

The background is important, if you are having a screen background, think about what color.

Instructing your clients where to put their hands really helps, as they always feel awkward when taking photographs, having a set place there to put them, helps the client relax.

Movement can be interesting in portrait photos, especially the hair can make a great image.

A 2/3rd turn is a very flattering position.

Don’t overdo the lighting as it can quickly go from being flattering to blinding, and your clients won’t feel relaxed with so much lighting pointed at them. Natural lighting is best, if possible.

People have a habit in photos to have their chin up too much, to get a good definition of the chin, your client should be looking at you, not down at the ground.

Guide your clients as to how to pose don’t say act natural with no directions, they aren’t models.
Clear communication is the most important thing to remember, you don’t want to confuse your client or getting them overthinking their poses.

Be happy and smile, you being in a good mood puts your client in a good mood.

I hope you found these useful, and don’t forget to try out PortraitPro, to give your portraits that extra wow factor.

How to Improve Your Wildlife Photos in Minutes

When you look through your photos, do you sometimes feel like you didn’t quite capture the true colors?

Animals are often one of these photos. Well here is a short tutorial on how to improve these photos, using LandscapePro and takes only minutes to do.

Once you have opened LandscapePro and uploaded your photo, you get asked to label what is in your photo.

After labeling the area, LandscapePro does a pretty good job and selecting the area for you but just need to go use the Pull tool and others on the left hand side to get this how you want, though you can come back and correct this later.

The next step is choosing what to change first, for this I am going to be getting the animal (tiger) first, so click on the animal tab to get the sliders to show.

It’s really easy to adjust the appearance of the animal, its easy and quick, moving the sliders you seeing the change instantly. If you liked it best how it was originally just double click on the slider.

There is also Presets tab at the top where you opened the animal tab, click on this, there is a long list of different presetting you can apply to your picture rather than trying to get your desired outcome using the sliders.

Next I click on the water tab, to change the settings, just a little bit.

After this you can change the picture as a whole, but if you have already edited all the image separately you don’t need to use this.

The Tigers orange fur really stands out now in the finished photograph.

To see just how dramatic the difference is, above is the before and after, side by side. This only took a few minutes to do!

Making your wildlife photos really stand out, download your free trial of LandscapePro today.

Check out this tutorial on black and white wildlife photography.

How to Get Your Photographs Noticed When You’re Getting Started

Thinking of the best way to get yourself noticed as a photographer can be scary, and a bit daunting, where to upload your photos, should you try and approach galleries right away??

If you have to think whether it is a good idea to approach galleries, then you aren’t quite ready for that, you aren’t confident enough in your work just yet and that’s fine.

Here are some good first steps to take to make it seem more manageable and less daunting:

Create your own style, don’t try and copy photographers work you admire. By all means look at them for inspiration, but be yourself and it makes your work more memorable.

A first good step is setting up an Instagram and/or Facebook page for your photos; this is a good way to get people to see your work and doesn’t cost you a penny. If you feel nervous about this set the page to private until you feel confident enough to make it public and invite your friends to like your account/page. There are also a lot of forums out there, where you can upload your images and connect with people doing the same thing as you.

The next step is to set up your own website or blog (this step can be done with the previous step). You can have a blog for free or if you want a more professional feel, you should go straight for the .com. This will cost you a little but it looks a lot more professional, and depending on your budget you could sell prints of your work on your site. There are also websites out there were you can sell your prints and the company prints and sends them for you, this could be a good thing but you can’t rely purely on them for your work to sell. You still need to market yourself.

By this point, you will look a lot more professional and established when you approach galleries about your work, another good step if you are planning approaching them in person is to get some business cards printed.

“A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective.”

Irving Penn

Good luck and don’t forget to check out any of our photo editing software (PortraitPro, LandscapePro, PortraitPro Body and Smart Photo Editor), that will help your photos be their very best, and all are currently on offer with 50% off.

How to Steal Man Ray’s Portrait Style

Man Ray is one of the great first iconic photographers; his portrait style has something magical about it even to this day. He was one of the first artists that started to use photography as an art form.

He was revolutionary with his photographic techniques, including double exposure (which we will look at in a future blog) and early experiments with color, though black and white is what he is well known for.

Man Ray’s portraits were often around shoulder length, though there are some full length, you can see old photos of his that he would ‘crop’ by making what he wanted the photo to be.

This is a quick tutorial into how to turn your photos into his signature portrait style.

After marking up the photo in PortraitPro Body, I play around with the sliders a little bit, to see what looks best, the only setting I changed on mine was the Curves one, in this image you can’t see the difference too much.

Don’t worry too much about the color and look of the make up, we are concentrating more on striking features, as this image will be made black and white in a minute.

In the picture settings, I move the slider to fully black and white, then move the others back and forth to get the lighting that I want.

This is the photo I export from PortraitPro Body and import into Smart Photo Editor.

The first thing that I do in Smart Photo Editor is crop down the size of the photo (the crop tool is on the right hand side.

After cropping the image to your chosen look, the background needed work on, a out of focus light grey background is what we are aiming for, it my photo there was somethings in the background that I needed to get removed to have that nice out of focus background. I used the Object Removal Tool which is found on the right hand side of the screen. As you can see, I have edited quite a few pieces. Don’t worry if like mine it doesn’t look great, we just want to remove the defining features.

select area

Next we are adding an effect to the background, you do this by selecting the Select Area button on the RHS, click on background, then color in what you want to add an effect to, on your left hand side of the screen, you can adjust the size of your selection tool.

Don’t worry if you go too far over, you can correct this easily by the erase from selection button on the right.

Click the Confirm Selection and Browse Effects button on the left when you have finished.

blurred background

The effect I chose was called ‘Blur’, you can change the strength of the effects you choose but I kept mine as full.

This created a lovely blurry effect with a slightly shadow look from the darker part of my background.

Here is my end result of a Man Ray style portrait.

Hope you have enjoyed this tutorial and try out PortraitPro Body and Smart Photo Editor, they are both currently 50% off in the sale.

Camera Tips for the Perfect Photo

It is now officially spring, what is better than finally putting on your walking shoes and a warm coat, grabbing your tripod and obviously your camera and getting outside to capture the first moments of spring.

Whether it’s a photo of morning dew, of a newly born lamb or the sunrise it is revitalising to get out into the spring sun and enjoy the fresh air. What better way than to get some experimenting done out in the great outdoors.

Camera tips to remember to get that perfect shot

Shutter speed – is used to control motion, the faster the shutter speed the fast speed being what you are trying to capture is moving
If you are taking photos using a long shutter time, remember to use your tripod
Subject matter/where you shoot from – check that you have the best angle you can get
Lighting – this is very important, to get the right lighting might mean having to get up early or stay up late, but it will be worth it
Filters if needed – a great filter for landscapes is polarising lens filter
Practise – this goes without saying

Don’t forget you can then edit your photos with PortraitPro or LandscapePro

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