How to Take Glamor Shots ~ Enhance Photography Skill

Whether you're a photographer looking to branch into a special, lucrative class of portrait or a high school senior looking to shoot a flattering self-portrait for free, glamor shots can be fun and satisfying for everyone involved.

Instructions

Go easy with any special effects you don't know like the back of your hand. Just because you have, say, an industrial-strength fan you keep for ventilating your warehouse doesn't mean you have to point it at your subject. Until you log some serious practice hours with it and a dummy subject, you're just going to make her look like Medusa.

Glamor portraits are all about creating an alluring, interesting image. As such, pose the subject--the person you're taking a picture of--to take advantage of her figure. Present her most flattering features as prominently as her face--that said, do not present her features more prominently that her face. Glamor photography is still essentially portrait photography.

Though the camera should always be at eye level, experiment with the position of the subject's eye level. Try a prone position by having the subject lay on her stomach, or switch it up by having her lie on her back. Maybe have her sit back towards the camera, with her looking pensively off to the side.

If your subject chooses a standing pose, position the arms and the legs such that they draw attention to the body. Don't be so overt as to have the subject point at herself, but take special note of the position of any portrait.

Remember the rule of thirds: Some of the best glamor portraits shot outside a studio are shot off-center, with the subject on either the right or the left third of the picture, nowhere near the center. If your subject chooses a more conventional studio shoot, however, you're probably better off to ignore this suggestion and stick to a regular portrait style.

Under no circumstances have the subject's nose pointed at the camera. This will create a mugshot effect. Similarly, avoid too much head tilt, as this will create a broken neck effect.

For conventional studio glamor portraits, keep your strongest flash light--your main light--above and slightly to the side of your subject's face, and keep the weaker flash-- your fill light--at eye level and at the other side of the subject's face.

Mount a light source behind or above and behind the subject as a hairlight. This creates a halo effect. Though this is much sought after in all kinds of portrait photography, it's especially required in glamor photography. No glamor shoot is complete without it.

In glamor photography, use a stronger hairlight setting than you would otherwise. The stronger the halo, the more striking the image.

Experiment with the lighting. Do you really need a main light? Maybe the sun will suffice. Do you really need a fill light? Maybe the face will look better half in shadow. What would the hairlight do

Never, under any circumstances, use a direct, on-camera flash in glamor photography. This kind of lighting is the least flattering possible, and the object of glamor photography is to create the most flattering image you can. Therefore, if your subject does something ugly, politely suggest a different pose without drawing attention to her toothless smile.

A very narrow depth of field--where everything in the far background and far foreground are way out of focus--is essential to an outdoor glamor shoot. To achieve a narrow depth of field, widen your aperture as far as it will go--F/1.8 is wider than F/5.6 which, in turn, is wider than F/8.

Turn down your ISO as low as it will go. Colors will be much richer in ISO 100 than ISO 800, and there will be far less grain--distortion of color--in the finished product.

Use a soft focus filter, either on the end of your lens or in Photoshop. These will make the picture look "fuzzy" and will, if nothing else you do, create the distinctive glamor shot look.

As with all portraits: make sure there is enough dead space above the head position to give the face some breathing room; eyes must be visible and sharply in focus, whether or not she's looking at the camera; shoot the portrait at or slightly above eye level; use a lens with about a 70 mm focal length.

Specifically speaking, with full-frame DSLRs or film cameras, between 75 and 135 mm is an ideal focal length to avoid distortion in the face. With most DSLRs--including all models between a Nikon D40 and D300x--any focal length between 50 and 70 mm will avoid this distortion.