Outdoor Men Portrait

Hello,

I've been asked to do some outdoor portraits by a male friend and i don't know squat about photographing male in outdoor situations, except when i do self-portraits...:). I googled but can't find good sample shots.

It's just gonna be a casual outdoor portraits, no close-ups, i will be shooting from a distance to get that background out of focus as much as possible. My camera is just a P&S Canon S2 IS but it goes up to 400mm setting.

Any sites you recommend or member gallery/ies to check out for ideas ? Thank You.

ed

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jose Tan on October 3, 2011 at 8:46am

Does this fit your current needs? If so, you can also check the other variations here. Hope it helps! And good luck!

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Permalink Reply by nathan mccreery on October 4, 2011 at 7:11am

I've photographed families, individuals, men, women children and the dogs that love them for years. Why is it any harder to photograph a man than a lady? If you don't know "squat" about photographing a male then you really don't know "squat" about the rest of it either. Principles are the same no matter whose in front of the camera. THE CAMERA USED IS IMMATERIAL!!!!!

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Permalink Reply by SRT30D on October 5, 2011 at 8:34pm

Damn, the guy ain't claiming to be a 'pro' and sure as hell isn't claiming to have 'pro' gear, so what the hell's the problem? You don't have to get down on him when he's asking for help.

Damn, what a nerd.

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Permalink Reply by nathan mccreery on October 6, 2011 at 7:21am

You completely and totally didnt read what I said. What I did say is that posing, and creating portraits of one person is no different in technique than photographing another. Principles remain the same. What I didn't say was that equipment is the defining factor. There are clues all over the original post, for instance; what camera they would be using. The camera is much less important than the person using it. A thing that I see so often is someone claiming to be a professional with lot's of photographs of very pretty 17 year old girls. Bad technique, bad posing, bad lighting; but the photographs work because the girl is pretty. Give them a 50 year old bald fat man and they are completely lost. Why? They don't know principles. That's all I was saying. By the way, you have a language problem.

Also, he's the one who said he didn't know squat.

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Permalink Reply by CameraClicker on October 4, 2011 at 8:56am

I think you are saying you want ideas about posing your subject? Google returned these and a number of others:

http://photography-poses.net/male-photography-poses%E2%80%93-9-tips...

http://www.squidoo.com/examplesofphotographyposes

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Permalink Reply by SRT30D on October 5, 2011 at 8:28pm

Choose a cloudy day if you can: best liting you'll find.
Trees are a good backdrop for 'men', though if he's a cyclist or SCUBA diver, the background and props can be arranged.
Hands are a difficult appendage: have him stand with his hands in his pockets, arms crossed, or behind head- kind of 'flexing' his biceps, even though he is wearing a full sleeve.(Shoot several with hands in different positons- even under chin if there's a 'fencepost' close to hand.)
But really, there's no difference in shooting men than women, except women are smooth and round, men are rough and square. (Seriously- I forget who it was, but a femme photog did a photo study on this a 'hundred' years ago and this was her conclusion.)
A country setting is always good for men, as is water- such as lake or seashore- or forest- intimated, of course, since not all of us live in woodsy country.
Too, earth colored clothing is 'manly', as are hats in hand (though 'modern men' tend to wear them), and we can't neglect horses, dogs and shotguns in fall. Nothing says 'man' like a horse, dog or shotgun.
SRT

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Permalink Reply by Edgar Alegre on October 22, 2011 at 1:13pm

I haven't been online but thanks for all the responses.

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Permalink Reply by David Wollum on October 26, 2011 at 1:50am

Use the Rule of Thirds. Jose Tan, the first to reply to this discussion, has an excellent shot posted here. It works, in part because of the way the model is posing, but in a larger sense, because he followed the Rule of Thirds. The left two-thirds of the shot is out-of-focus background. On the imaginary line creating the third farthest to the right is the subject of the shot, crisp and in focus.

The subject is interesting, but made even more so by where Jose positioned him within the frame. Try moving your subject to the left-center or right-center of the shot, as Jose did. Doing that will almost always improve the composition.