Need a guide... Angles and faces

Hi,

I am looking for a guide that will help me learn proper angles for portraits. I understand that different types of faces, bodies (long, rounds, fat, slim, double chin etc.) will require you to take pictures from different angles. Goal is to make the subject look flattering.

Thanks.

There's a little more to it than just the camera angle.

You'll need to learn how to guide your subject into a flattering pose. For a start, do a Youtube search for Peter Hurley's "It's All About the Jaw" video. In addition to his tips, angling the hips and shoulders of a standing subject can help elongate their neck and give a more defined jawline, which is desirable on just about any sort of portrait.

After that, portraiture is about lighting. Short lighting and broad lighting are two techniques to learn off the bat; one of those two techniques will almost invariably allow you to get a pleasing face portrait on just about anyone.

There are lots of posing and lighting guides out there - but many of them are very subjective, or dated to that era's style of portraiture. Much of it will come with experience, and really studying portraits that you personally find to be pleasing or unflattering. What makes a portrait good or bad?

One of my first and most important portraiture tasks was to figure out how to eliminate a double chin. My wife isn't fat but she doesn't have much definition in the chin or jawline. With effort and study, I can now almost always take a good shot of her that flatters her and minimizes the double chin.

Wow, that video is excellent!!!! Thank you so much.
Time to do some more research before I find a victim to shoot

Please let me know if you have any other tips etc.

One good tip to focus on the eyes of the model. It somehow becomes more personal that way and not just a simple portrait picture. You can also use soft lighting so the blemishes will be minimized when you take the photo, it will also save you a lot of time in post processing. For more tips you can visit my blog: http://shootdigitalpic​slikethepros.com …photography-forum-support Cheers!

Thank you Mike. I do try to focus on eyes in my shots. When focusing, do you use a single point in your camera of do you leave it set to multiple/all focus points? I tend to use a single point almost all of the time.

I will check out your blog as well.

Regards.

I don't mean to be flip, but at the end of the day, trust your eyes. They're the best guides you'll ever have access to.

Thanks Foodguy. I am simply looking for general rules and guides to practice with so that I know what a 'safe' image should look like before I go around start breaking rules to create my own.

Here are some things that have been posted over time:

http://photocamel.com …les-good-portraiture.html

https://photography-on-the.net …/showthread.php​?t=1182415

https://photography-on-the.net …/showthread.php​?t=1182415

Baadil wrote in post #15665832
Hi,

I am looking for a guide that will help me learn proper angles for portraits. I understand that different types of faces, bodies (long, rounds, fat, slim, double chin etc.) will require you to take pictures from different angles. Goal is to make the subject look flattering.
Thanks.

posing tutorial
http://lumitouch.com/b​enstudiotutorial/index​.html