Learning Portrait Photography
A much welcomed abundance of photographs recently posted of my new nieces reminded me that it was time to start learning the ins and outs of basic portrait photography. Basically, I'd like to be able to take unique photographs of people I know personally and other interesting subjects. There are a few impressive prime lenses out there that would make the process easier, but they're uber-expensive, so I decided to learn with the stock lenses in my current toolkit.
After re-reading a couple chapters in my camera manual, I decided to go for it and just start snapping at different angles, focal lengths, and shutter speeds. Fortunately, my wife Jessie gives me no grief when taking close-up pictures (and lots of 'em). Although the trade-off is that I don't get to decide where she sits/lies down. Since we got our new furniture this weekend, I was limited to sofa scenery. This might just be the only photograph where Jessie was looking directly at me, and not reading her book.
This black and white photograph with a warming filter was shot in natural light with a Nikon D60 at 35mm, f/5.3, ISO-800. Given the lighting and lens I had attached (AF-S 18-55mm VR), these settings worked well.
