Take Professional Portraits At Home

Take Professional Portraits At Home Maybe you get professional portraits of your baby taken every month and want to save money. Maybe you like photography and want to branch out and go beyond Instagram. With some investment in supplies, you can learn to take professional style portraits at home and become part of this engaging and growing hobby. One of the first things that you need to get if you are planning to take home portraits, besides a camera, is professional style photography background. These backgrounds are large pieces of fabric or paper, which you use to create a neutral backdrop so that you don't take away from the subject matter of your portrait. Besides just the regular backgrounds, you will need to buy a metal stand for them and clamps to hold the fabric, usually muslin, on the stand. While stands may be bulky, they do sell portable ones that will help you store your equipment in the easiest way possible. You can buy all of these things as TheLAShop. A background can add richness to your photography so that it doesn't just look like you are taking standard, every day pictures. Once you set up this background in a place with neutral lighting, you will want to get professional lights to help really keep up the professional image. Studio lights and accessories can bring your photography up to a whole different level. With soft boxes, you can diffuse the light and make it soft; creating a look that is shadow free and creates dimmer yet richer pictures. With umbrella reflectors you can have brighter light, especially good if you want to use shadow to enhance features of what you are photographing. With all of this, you will need a good camera. While phones have wonderful cameras on them now, if you are investing in professional backdrops and lighting, then you want to have a camera that brings out the best in your pictures. You can go with a DSLR if you want to fine tune focus, aperture and zoom on your pictures. These come with all sorts of interchangeable lenses. However they can be expensive. For $200 you can get a point and shoot digital camera that has many of the same features as a DSLR at a fraction of the price. Many of these have the same megapixels and have features to allow you to take almost any kind of picture. Finally, like all good photographers, you will want to have some sort of photo editing software such as Photoshop. With this, you can change pictures into black and white, airbrush out defects, crop or add color effects to make your photographs looks as good as the pros. There are many instructional eBooks and blogs on how to use Photoshop and the software has come down in price. Photography is a rewarding hobby or even profession for many. With the right equipment and some studying of various techniques on taking pictures in the most professional way, you can create artistic, beautiful portraits while having a good time.