Lighting and Exposure

The key to the mood of a portrait is the light. If your subjects are not stationary, it's more difficult to control the lighting. If you are shooting indoors, you may be able to restrict a subject to an area with a nicer background and prearrange the lighting. This may be as simple as pulling back the drapes from a bay window and hanging a white sheet on the opposite wall to act as a big reflector or it may involve bouncing the light from a portable flash off any largish white reflective surface (to give a nice soft light source). Either way, if your camera is not set to Auto ISO, you might have to open the menu and manually set it to the highest ISO number (usually this is ISO 400). This effectively makes the 'film' more sensitive and will go some way in assisting you when there's little, or less light than you'd like. . . . (to read the remainder of this article, please log in below.)