Scott Kelby on Six Quick Tips for Fixing Facial Challenges
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In this excerpt from The Digital Photography Book, Part 2, Scott Kelby offers six tips for photographing facial features such as a big nose, round face, wrinkles, or big ears.
From the book
From the book
From the book
Get The Digital Photography Book, Part 2, or order the entire 5-book boxed set, now available.
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You can hide or greatly reduce many typical facial problems (like a big nose, round face, wrinkles, big ears, etc.) by how you pose and light your subject. Here are six quick posing tips to help you make your subjects look their very best:
- If your subject is balding, shoot from a lower angle, and don't use any hair light whatsoever.
- If your subject has lots of wrinkles, try lighting them straight on, because side lighting tends to accentuate the shadows and make the wrinkles more prominent.
- If your subject has large ears, pose them so they're only showing one ear, then light them so that ear appears on the shadow side of their face (so basically, only one ear is showing, and that one is kind of hidden in the shadow).
- If they have a big honkin' nose (that’s a technical term, by the way), then have them turn their head straight toward the camera, have them raise their chin a bit, and shoot from a little lower angle, which will take much of the emphasis off their schnozz.
- If your subject has a double chin, have them look straight at the camera, and extend their head forward toward the camera a bit. This stretches and tightens the skin under their chin. Also, if you light them straight on (with the light positioned directly above where you're shooting from), this puts a shadow under their chin and helps to hide the double chin.
- If your subject has a round or fat face, make fun of them, and tell them to lose a few pounds. Then, when they burst into tears, you'll have some of the most natural-looking expressions of the day. Or, you can have them turn their face to the left or right, giving a 3/4-view of their face, which will make their face look less round, but really—it's your call.
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