I am often “wow’d” when I see magazine or other professional portraits of people at how perfect the color, light, skin tone, etc. are. Before I got into photography, I assumed that the bulk of this was credited toward having the latest and greatest technology. Once I started taking portraits and delivering images I shot, I realized that the quality of the equipment only gets you part way there. The photographer also has to know what they’re doing in terms of composition and the exposure triangle. Solid equipment and photography skills gets you 60% there, in my humble opinion. Post-production, the editing that takes place before the image is delivered to the client, makes up fully the remaining 40% of the final product. This final 40% is the topic of this article.
The First 60%
I’ll (kind of) briefly cover the 60% that I assumed was all of the photography world until I actually started taking pictures along with my brief history of what I had put in my camera bag.
⬇️ Skip Past the First 60% Stuff
The First 20%: Equipment
Equipment Matters…Absolutely. Apart from my stint with 35mm film photography in the early 90’s, when I picked photography back up around 2016-2017 in a digital world, I started with a “Prosumer” (professional consumer) quality camera body, the Canon EOS Rebel t7i. I paired that with a basic kit zoom lens, the Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 that I think came with the camera, and the “nifty-fifty” Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens which I had heard every photographer should have. Soon I gave myself some breathing room between me and my subjects by adding a Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 lens to my setup as well.
I didn’t understand much about photography at the time, but this kit got me started and I took some nice images with it. I quickly realized I needed a decent zoom lens for shooting my kids’ sporting events, the bulk of what I shot early on, and I knew I needed it to perform in lower light settings without a flash. I opted for the Tamron SP 70-200mm f/2.8 lens which is still my workhorse lens today. Not only did the 200mm zoom get me some reach for sports and the f/2.8 aperture better performance in lower light settings, it proved to be a very capable portrait lens as I started taking portraits.
I did find myself getting frustrated with the image quality in lower light and wanted more “information” to work with in terms of my images. After much research, I upgraded my camera body to the full frame Canon EOS 5D Mark IV which was arguably the best portrait camera Canon had produced up until then. The 5D4 is used by thousands of photographers across practically all genres. I also explored lenses which, to me, are maybe even more important than the camera itself in terms of producing quality images. I got rid of my 18-55mm kit lens, my original nifty-fifty, and the 85mm lens and added a Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L lens and a Sigma 50mm f/1.4 Art lens to serve as my primary portrait lens. These are the three lenses I still use today (50mm f/1.4, 24-70mm f/2.8, and 70-200mm f/2.8).
The Next 40%: Photography Basics
I could write an entire article on the things I find important from a photography core competency perspective. Maybe I will some time because lord knows I’m always learning something new. But in a nutshell for this post, I believe the next 40% of the first 60% is composition and understanding the exposure triangle.
Composition is about how the photographer frames up the image, places the subject, positioning with respect to one another, props, or the environment…basically the makeup of the picture. There are some great skills to learn in portraiture, particularly the Rule of Thirds that help produce appealing compositions.
I don’t think there are really composition “rules” necessarily…I see this more as what I would call the Thirds Technique. It is a technique one can employ to place the primary focus area of an image on one the intersections of thirds boundaries on the image. This presents a naturally balanced aesthetic and is generally deemed to be pleasing to the eye. In this example, Adam’s face is intentionally positioned at the top-right intersection of thirds boundaries.
While composition matters, I believe the most important fundamental skills to have revolves around exposure…getting the light right…and the elements of photography that factor into that.
The Exposure Triangle
The combination of three factors influence proper exposure in a photograph. This is referred to as the Exposure Triangle. Each of these are settings you can manually set on your DSLR camera to achieve the look you’re trying to achieve.
This diagram accompanies a nice overview of the Exposure Triangle found on the Action Camera Blog.
The Final 40%: Post-Production
Ahh, finally what you may have come here to read in the first place! So far I’ve covered what I think makes up 60% of a solid portrait. What comes after the shoot is what completes the 100%.
You can have nice gear and take fantastically composed and exposed images stored right to your memory card. Most professional photographers try to get it as close to “right” in the camera so that post-production is minimized. But there is always some element of editing required to render the image the photographer saw when they framed up the shot.
RAW File Format
One reason for this dull and flat image quality is the RAW camera format that many – myself included – choose to shoot with. RAW files capture the most digital information from the camera sensor when shooting the photo. While RAW files give the photographer the most information to work with, it often comes at the expense of color depth and a lack of dynamics when saved as-is. For this reason, photographers employ software like Adobe Photoshop to correct those elements to their liking.
Re-touching
It’s often not enough to simply correct the color and dynamics of the RAW format. I believe an important part of portrait photography is presenting the subject in the best way possible…the best version of them visually. To that end, part of my post-production workflow involves dealing with any distractions in the image or in the background and re-touching the subjects and the environment to present that best version I can capture.
I am pretty new to the post-production game and I’m always learning more. Here is a comparison of the portrait above showing 1. the SOOC image, 2. the final product I delivered to the client, and 3. a fresh editing round with some newly acquired skills and techniques.
There is a huge difference between SOOC (left) and what I delivered (center). While perfectly happy with that delivered image, I did employ some new tools and techniques to re-edit the file earlier today and came up with the image on the right. It’s very close to what I delivered to my client, but there are some subtle details I could have done a better job on previously.
Specifically, the new edit focuses on skin texture and tone, the eyes, and the teeth. In the effort to maximize the “best version” I captured here, I spent some time re-touching their faces and landed on the bottom image to the left. Slight differences, but I think they are significant improvements in terms of presentation.
Conclusion
What do you think about all this? I would love to hear your reactions to my content, my photos, or whatever other conversation you might want to have on the topic. Drop me a note or leave comments below to engage. Thanks for reading!
You can see more of my photography work on my Jeremy Davis Photography website. Need portraits? I know a guy. 😉
