Shooting your self – tips

Photography especially with boudoir is not as easy as it may first appear, this is generally due to the photography that clients want is ‘classy’ and not ‘cheap’. The other parts that make boudoir photography really work are the Lighting, the Poses and of course the skill of the photographer.

I know from experience  that many couples have tried these home made boudoir photo shoots and found it to be a massive problem to get anything like the pro’s and unless your investing several thousands of pounds into camera and lighting equipment and have a good grasp of photography, the chances are you’re trying to get your shots on a compact digital. If you are trying to do this by yourself, you will always find it hard as you cannot see the photos that you are taking while trying to be in them.. so first tip is get some help.

This is an average boudoir photo and we can see a massive amount of problems with it.
Here is a List of issues that I see:
The head looks far too big.
The background is too bright.
The hands and feet are cut off.
The body is twisted.
The camera angled wrong.

 

The camera angle in this image is wrong and this is causing a lot of the problems within this photo.

As you can see in this diagram, the camera is tipped in on the top left hand corner, this has the effect of magnification from this point and therefore distorts the picture.

If you can see the photo that you want to take and things aren’t as they looked in your eye and what has been taken by the camera, then you need to hold the camera straight and level. 

 A tripod will help as well as looking at how you hold the camera making sure its is level on both axis.

Even while holding the camera at the correct angles, some people pushing the button to take the photo will tip the camera, this is often overlooked when they try to get the picture framed correctly or have other aspects  of the photo on their mind.

The rule of thirds is what makes a technical picture correct, it is some what also linked with how we look at a picture.
We look at the upper right cross point and work anti clockwise when looking at an image, also a point of the highest contrast or most vivid colour.
All four points and areas should contain points of interest to make the best photos for your boudoir shoot.

One of the problems with this image is that the background is blown out (its too white) across the back and the bottom there should be a defined line of contrast, this is lost due to the use of a compact camera that cannot cope with the foreground lighting and background lighting.

What we have done in the images above is corrected the distortion of the camera and then applied a rule of thirds overlay so that you can see the difference in the images.
As you can see right-way the head is right size and we have also cropped the image to fill the frame. Lose and cut off arms do not attract interest and are senseless to have in the image from what was left in the original.
we think that the last third on the right side of the image, is also distorted and as you can see we have changed this in the image below.

When shooting your photo shoot, you will need to consider lighting, with compact cameras you do not want to use the flash as you could end up with an awful image.
When  you think about lighting, you should consider where the light places will be and where the shadows will be, this is a big factor as it can be flattering or give a terrible image, no matter how good the angles and person in the photos are.

In this image, you can see that we have used one light, What we have done is brought it down so that it is above the model and at 45 degrees pointing down the body and across. The light is about 12 degrees above facing the model.

As you possibly don’t have accesses to professional studio lighting, you need to use either controlled lighting or take control of your camera. This is where people become very stuck with compact cameras, not to mention the control and balance of all the aspects of the lighting.
If you have a fixed lighting source, then you need to be able to manually shoot the image..

Here are some setting to try if you can go fully manual.
Shutter 150 F stop 5 ISO 200.
Adjusting the shutter to 65 is possible if you need more light to expose the image correctly, you may also wish to raise the ISO to 400.

If the images exposes correctly or too bright, then change the F stop (aperture) to a higher number therefore cutting out more of the light.

If you have adjustable lights, you may wish to use higher lighting that you think, the lighting you see is not the lighting that makes the photos.
Your camera will try to meter (set it self) for the lighting all over the image to give you a balanced image, If you look at the metering settings or what could be called sample settings, you would need to set this to a small point. If it has a timer setting for this metering, then set if for a longer duration.

Hold the camera to a higher lite part of the image that you will want, if you have  and EL button press this so that it is locked, (EL means exposure lock) Then frame the image and take the photo.
Remember; compact cameras require higher (more intense /brighter) lighting to achieve the same results as professional cameras, they also preform worse with higher ISO setting ( ISO setting is sensitivity to light) You will also not be able to obtain large prints or have the dynamic range of of professional SLR camera.

Taking photos like the ones we take, is all about lighting and being able to set you camera manually. Use one or two lights to light the model and you will see the difference in the images. Your eyes are great, and they balance light so that you can see, so you need to look at the lighting you use to gauge how they will look when the camera has taken them.

Posing the model also has  a lot to do with the end result, by working the model and changing things around, slight tip’s, dips and turns make a BIG difference. Take a look at the videos on the Boudoir Photography website for some ideas.

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