1. Maintain good eye contact with the subject. Many people ask me where to focus when taking photos of a person. My advice is focus at the eyes. Make sure the eyes are as sharp as possible.
2. I know I just said keep good eye contact. But at times, you need to break this rule. "There are a lot of ‘rules’ out there when it comes to composition and I’ve always had a love hate relationship with them. My theory is that while they are useful to know and employ that they are also useful to know so you can purposely break them", in fact learn to break all of them.
3. Experiment with lighting. Side lighting, front lighting, back lighting, use a bounce flash, use a reflector. Just keep shooting the same subject but with different lighting sources. You may just be amazed.
4. Sometimes posed shots can look somewhat…. posed. Some people don’t look good in a posed environment and so switching to a candid type approach can work. The trick I apply at times, is to keep the subject in focus and immediately take a second shot once the first one is done. Usually subjects feel more relaxed in the second shot.
5. There are rules in photography, like the rule of third. For portrait, it is usually advised to give space to the subject and to apply the rule of third. Remember point 2 above. Break them. A variation on the idea of zooming in on one part of the body is to obscure parts of your portrait subject’s face or body. You can do this with clothing, body parts like their hands or just by framing part of them out of the image. This leaves the viewer to use his imagination and of course you only focus on what is want viewers to pay attention to.
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