Portrait Photography II

In my first post for portrait photography, I wrote:

If you are using wide-angle lens and intending to take a full-body-length portrait, avoid shooting at eye level. This will make the subject’s legs look short!

Lingoes:

To shoot in wide-angle means to zoom out. The opposite of wide-angle is telephoto, or long lens. A normal lens is in-between, and has a field of view similar to human eyes.

How did I know shooting at eye level with wide-angle lens can make a subject’s legs look short? Because, as a lousy photographer, I have made this mistake in the past . Here is an example of bad image...

Wide-angel, eye level

How to solve this problem? One possibility is to squat down when taking the picture. Alternatively, shoot with either a normal lens or a telephoto lens. The following photo was taken with a short telephoto lens...

Short telephoto

As you can see, images shot with wide-angle lens and telephoto lens look different. This brings up another issue:

Most point-and-shooters stand at one place and zoom the lens. A better approach is to determine beforehand what lens you want to use, and zoom with your legs!

Related post:

Portrait Photography