Tips for Capturing Great Candid Shots

Candid photography is all about catching people in the act of being themselves. This type of photography demands lot of patience & practice at the photographers part, as being a photographer you have to wait for the right moment to happen and then capture it creatively. Candid shots are simple, natural and beautifully mirror essence of the moments. Capturing candid shots is not that easy as it may appear, so here are few tips to adopt when taking candid shots.

1. Keep your camera ready all time - Keep your camera available, as you never know when a fantastic frame will occur. Whenever you see a moment unfolding, capture it in your camera. Keep the camera charged enough, so that you do not miss any moments. Candid photography is all about spontaneity, so carry your camera everywhere.

2. Background - When taking candid shots, select a shooting position that provides a distraction free and clean background. You can shoot using a wide aperture; this will fill the frame with subject and blur the background. To overcome any background disturbances, you can frame tightly.

3. Capture people unaware - Now this sounds so obvious but the beauty of candid shots lies in capturing people unaware. This way you can produce shots that are more natural. Even if they know you are clicking pictures, let the scene play and keep yourself uninvolved in the scene. Wait patiently and let them do whatever they are doing setting their hair, dancing, laughing, talking to someone or whatever, when moment happens capture it in your camera without subject intentionally interacting with your camera. 
   
   
   
   
   

4. Use different angles - Experiment with photographs using different angles like from the side, up above, from front, behind; this provides an unconventional angle and can give your photos an interesting depth. Especially when you taking candid shots of kids, get down on your knees while clicking photos.

5. Use continuous shooting mode - More the number of clicks, more are the chances of capturing interesting candid moments. For this, you can use continuous shooting mode on your camera and capture multiple shots, this provides you an edge when it comes to selecting best shots. When you watching a scene you want to capture, take at least 9-10 photos of the same scene, later you can select the ones that perfectly describes the moment.

Tips for capturing compelling Athlete Portraits

An ideal Athletic portrait depicts an athlete’s true personality and magnifies their persona to their fans, teammates, and coaches. The professional athletic portrait can be considered a calling card to build their brand, reputation and career. Here are five tips for capturing compelling athlete portraits:

1. Eye Contact - Eyes are main attraction of face, and has remarkable impact on an image. When shooting portraits, the thumb rule is to focus on the person’s eye since eyes is the focal point of an image. Convey emotion in your shot, by including laughter, surprise, intensity & passion. These kinds of shots create relationship, and connection.
2. Composition - The most followed rule for composition is ‘Rule of thirds’ but there is no need of sticking to traditional techniques every time, you can push the creativity by placing your subject dead center or off to one edge. You can also enhance image quality by using a solid color backdrop that enhances their skin tone and uniform color and brings out overall color and contrast.
3. Lighting - While there are numerous lighting in portraits, the choice of lighting depends upon the kind of portrait you want to capture. You can experiment with side-lighting, back-lighting, and silhouetting the subject. For creating softness or hardness in shadows, you can make use of lighting modifiers like Soft boxes, reflectors etc. If you get inspired by seeing any existing lighting portrait, you can follow their lighting set up to achieve desired impact.
4. Candid shots - Though portraits are shot in pre-arranged settings, and are all about posed shots. However, you will be surprised to see the result, you achieve with the candid shots such as when athlete is tying their shoelace, adjusting their gear, playing with props, having a natural laugh. Candid shots are a great way to reflect true personality of the athlete and look natural. On the contrary, posed shots can sometime make them nervous or uncomfortable.
   
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   Props - Props are a great way to add point of interest in the image. For athlete portraits, props such as gear, rackets, trophies or medals, uniforms, balls, and sticks adds a story and drama to the image. Let them play around with prop, or make them pose with prop up close to their face, this will tell the subject’s full story in a compelling way.