4 Tips for Helping People Feel Comfortable During Their Portrait Session

By: Mat Coker

Sooner or later, almost everyone has to sit alone in front of a camera for a grad portrait or professional headshot. It is almost always an uncomfortable experience for portrait clients. But it’s easy to forget this as photographers.
When I great people for their portraits they often confess things like, “I’m terrible with photos,” “I feel sick,” or “I hate my face.”
Perhaps because I’m so empathetic, I’ve developed a knack for making the most nervous and hopeless people shockingly excited about their photos.
In this article, I’ll show you how I do it so that you can make even your most uncomfortable portrait clients happy with their experience.

I am personally drawn to black and white portraits.

1. Simple Light Setup

Since everyday life already throws you a heavy load of distractions and difficulties, I always encourage photographers to keep their projects as simple (but meaningful) as possible.
No matter how you choose to light your portrait subject, I recommend you do it as simply as possible. The point is to put all your focus on the person you’re photographing, not on equipment.
I either use natural light (a window and a reflector), or a one light setup inspired by Zack Arias.

Window Light

The benefit to natural light is that there are no flashes of light or large umbrellas to make the person feel as though they are at a high-pressure professional photo session. Your subject’s imagination is filled with the photo shoots they’ve seen on TV and you should relieve that pressure for them.

This is my natural light setup.

This is a portrait taken with that window light studio setup.

Using natural light and a silent shutter with a mirrorless camera allows the photography part to be as invisible as possible.

One Speedlight

My one light setup includes a speedlight with a 60-inch umbrella and a reflector.

This is my one light setup. It’s one speedlight with a 60-inch umbrella.

This photo was taken with that one light setup.

Once set up, you should forget about your gear (the window, speedlight, and the camera) and focus 100% on your subject.

2. How to Focus

This isn’t about your camera, but focusing on your subject in order to make the best portraits possible.
If you are at all self-conscious as a photographer, it is absolutely critical that you do not focus on yourself.
Perhaps you’re nervous because of a lack of confidence, or because you’re worried they’ll hate their photos. Forget all that and just focus on your subject.

Small talk

“A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.” — Edward Steichen

You can use small talk to distract the subject from their own nervousness and self-consciousness in 

front of the camera. Talk about their business, their kids, or the last trip they went on. Anything that 

will distract them from being camera shy.

Warm up

Feel free to warm up with some “test shots,” even if you don’t really need them. Have your subject sit in front of the camera for a few shots where you’re doing nothing but “testing the light.”
Direct them a little bit, but nothing too serious. I sometimes transition into the real photos by saying something funny like, “Okay the light is perfect, now let me see a cheesy smile.” It can often lead to some laughter and the first candid photo.

Candid portraits are the most joyful part of a portrait session for me. You don’t have to be a comedian 

to make people laugh. Just connect over something in your life and laughter will eventually flow.

I’ll often try to match the expression with the clothes my subject is wearing. I think a softer 

expression is more suitable for formal wear. But I’ll try everything at the moment and decide 

what looks best later.

Candid portraits

“There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment.” — Robert Frank

Yes, even a professional headshot session should include some informal candid photos. Candids are real, and even if you’re after a posed photo, candids are the path to discovering who they are when their guard is down.

When people can laugh together there begins to be a comfortable connection.

We often laugh because of the tension created by a joke. But even real-life discomfort or tension 

can lead to the eventual release through laughter.

3. Finding Soul

“Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera.” — Yousuf Karsh

I don’t care whether I’m photographing real estate agents, future lawyers, high school grads, or “mompreneurs.” I treat everybody like an executive, valedictorian, or royalty during their portrait session.
We’re all much deeper than our occupation, even though it may be a deep expression of who we are. Fill your sessions with lightheartedness and true human connection. When you look through your photos later, you should be able to see the moment that your subject finally became relaxed.
Once relaxed, you’ll find the “real” person that was trapped below the surface of fake smiles and self-consciousness.
It may take you 10 minutes or more to get there, but it is the point in the session that you can move through your creative vision with your subject. You can show them how to squinch (Peter Hurley’s famous technique with the eyes), strike more advanced poses, or move in for close-ups.

Once I know I have made the portrait that the subject needs, I move on and try other things. I love 

this very soft expression and the way that her hair creates a frame around her. This won’t likely 

appear on her business card, but I think it’s a wonderful portrait.

4. Completely Candid

“It’s one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it’s another thing to make a portrait of who they are.” — Paul Caponigro

Being inspired by photojournalism and the idea of capturing truly raw, candid, spontaneous photos, I decided to try a portrait session with no posing. All there would be was conversation and pictures.
Here are some of the results, which I love.

This photo is all about the eyes, and whatever is going through her mind makes me want to laugh!

A completely candid photo portrait session means taking a lot of photos. Some of them looked 

posed, but it was a matter of quickly noticing something that looked right and capturing it before 

the moment passed.

I used a window as a natural light source. There were moments of silence during our conversation 

when she just looked out the window. Those were wonderful chances.

Leave room for surprises in your portrait sessions. You may find yourself thinking, “Did this client 

dare to bring their kids to a portrait session?” True, they’ll tear your studio to pieces and distract her 

from her professional portrait session. But along with a little chaos comes life and surprisingly human 

moments. In the middle of it all, her son came up to be nursed. Maybe this is what Robert Frank meant 

about the “humanity of the moment.”

The portrait session was supposed to have been for her. But who she is on her own isn’t who she is 

completely. We’re all much deeper than ourselves and are who we are partly because of the people 

around us.

Perhaps you know your subject has reached their maximum level of comfort when they can nurse 

their baby even while the camera is still clicking. I’m thrilled to photograph people one on one and 

make portraits that they’ll use as authors or business people. But I’m even more thrilled when those 

portraits become intensely human moments.

 Get Comfy

The next time you greet a nervous portrait client, remember that the experience has been hyped up in their mind. Distract them from their discomfort with small talk, warm them up with “no pressure” test photos, and make laughter a part of your session.
Include the candid photos when you deliver their photos. Even if they don’t use them for business purposes, they may be the photos they (and you) love most.
I’d love to hear what else you do to help people get comfortable in front of your camera. Let me know in the comments below.

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15 Tips for More Powerful Portraits

By: Oded Wagenstein

15 tips every portrait photographer must know for making more powerful portraits!

Here are 15 tips on getting powerful portraits

1. Have respect

This is my number one rule. It doesn’t matter if I am photographing a poor boy in Laos or the CEO of a large company in New York-I always respect the people I photograph. I live by the motto: “you should never get close to people in order to take their photo; you should take their photo in order to get closer to them”. Act as if your camera is a bridge and not a weapon. I have friends who are amazing street photographers, who manage to work with such discretion that they can get the portrait without the person realizing he was photographed. Certainly, there are some exceptions, but I believe that people are not zebras and we are not hunters. To summarize the point, I photograph old people in same manner I would like someone to take pictures of my grandmother.

2. Ask yourself – Do I understand what a portrait is?

“A Portrait is painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person […] the intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person” (from Wikipedia)
While this is a very basic definition of the concept, it can help us to understand the true nature of good portrait photography. A portrait must tell a story. What kind of story? A story about the person in the image. How can you tell a story of a person in one image? You can’t! You can never capture the whole story, because human beings are too complex. You can either choose to focus on a specific emotion expressed by the subject or by yourself. I call the first method “highlighting”, in which you zero in on a specific story, at a specific time.

For example: when I took the photo of the Japanese girl (above) I was trying to highlight this specific moment, when she held her mother’s hand, when she has not yet decided – whether to leave or hold on tight. Sometimes the best stories don’t reveal the whole story at once. Like in this image from China (below). Do you think this girl is waiting for someone who should be coming soon, or is she watching someone leave?

The second method, in which you imprint your on feeling onto the story, can start with answering the following question: How did you feel when you met this person? Because a good image is told by two people – the one in the image, and the one behind the camera.

3. Look for emotion

Someone’s exotic face from some remote tribe is nice to look at, but for it to be a true visual storytelling portrait, this face must evoke emotion. Steve McCurry called this the “unguarded moment”, the essential soul peeking out. It can be happiness, fear or excitement. Emotion is the best way to create a bond between the image and your viewers.
The best way to “catch” emotion on your camera’s sensor is by choosing the right moment to click the shutter. Be on the lookout for a specific powerful moment that can evoke the story on the person’s face.

4. Start with your comfort zone

Going out to the streets to shoot portraits of strangers is not an easy task to start with. The best way to hone your craft is by starting with a person you already know. By skipping the need to “break the ice”, it will be easier for you to think about other important elements in your portrait, such as: the light, composition, posing and color. You don’t have to travel far for an interesting face; you can start with friends and family.

5. Get out from your comfort zone

A day without learning something new is a wasted one. One of the most important things to note when dealing with portrait photography is that usually, the problem is with ourselves. “I do not want to hurt or offend”, and “I do not want to invade someone’s privacy” are all excuses which we tell ourselves on why we photograph people with a telephoto lens from a distance. So, if you truly want to take your portrait photography to the next level and be able to evoke emotion in your work, you must, as my mother says: “fake it till you makes it”. It is not as complicated as it seems in your head. Get out to the streets, find an interesting person and just go for it by saying: “Hello, I am a photography enthusiastic and I would like to take your photo…I would love to send you a copy as well”. You might be surprised with the results. By using this technique, the worst thing that can happen is that you will get a refusal and then just move on to the next person.

6. Choose the right focal length

“What is the best lens for portraits?” is a very common question among my students, and the answer is simple – there is no one best lens for portrait photography. You should adjust the focal length to your working style. When considering your next lens, you should take into account the following elements:

• The distance from which you usually like to photograph people
• The weight you are willing to carry around
• What is the maximum aperture for low light photography and for shallow depth of field?
• And of course, price

For me, most of my portraits are done with an 85mm or 24-70mm lens.

7. Choose the wrong focal length

Try this creative exercise. Go outside and take a portrait with a lens you are not used to working with. If you always work with a telephoto lens, try using a wide angle one. If you prefer to get close to your subject, take a step back and wait for the decisive moment. A good photographer is a flexible one.

8. Study the great masters of portrait photography

Whenever I need inspiration, I turn to the portfolios of this great photography masters:

• Dorothea Lange – one of the first photographers of Social realism
• Steve McCurry – probably the best color portrait maker in history
• Richard Avedon – unique fashion and portrait photography
• Sebastião Salgado- outstanding B&W documentary portraits
• Annie Leibovitz- Editorial portraits

(Please add your own in the comments section)

9. Experience variable depth of field

We all love portraits with that sweet low depth of field, which makes everything blurry in the background. In portraits, shallow depth of field is usually good because it leads the viewer’s eyes directly to the subject by making it sharper than the rest of the image. YET, please note that there is such a thing as a too shallow depth of field. In this case, the sharpness by the AutoFocus may be on the eyebrows or eyelashes instead of the eyes. Practice in order to understand the elements that affect the depth of field: the distance to the subject, focal length and aperture.

10. Leave the flash behind

The more gear you have with you, the less available you are to give attention to the person you are photographing. If we are dealing with studio photography, then the person knows what to expect. There is no need take your flash to India or China when there is so much beautiful available light. Craft your skill while working with natural light only BEFORE jumping to the next step of using reflectors, flashes or any other extra gear.

11. Don’t follow the crowd

Try this little exercise: type “woman with cigar in Cuba” into Google and see what happens. The same woman appears in almost all the images right? Those are images of many different photographers. I do not mean to hurt anyone, but how come with 3 million people visiting the country each year and with a population of 5,612,165 women, the same woman comes up in almost every image? Here’s a tip for you, before heading somewhere, anywhere, near or far, you should understand the place, culture and the “story” of the person in front of you. By doing your homework you will not fall into the trap of the “fake authenticity”

12. Think about the background

Many elements are required to create an interesting portrait: light, composition, angle, etc.., but one element is so important that I sometimes give it my pure attention: the background. You can think of the background in two levels. First, as an aesthetic element. Make sure there are no distracting elements, such as bright colors or moving objects in the background. Secondly, another level of using the background, is as an element to bring your story to life.

13. Keep it fun

If you are dealing with subjects who are not paid models, you should give something back as well as taking the photo. I do not want to discuss paying the person (maybe in another post) but you should make it easy and fun for your subject: telling a joke, showing the image on the back of the camera and making sure they are not in the sun are good points to start with.

14. Always ask for the person’s name

It doesn’t matter if you do travel portraits of strangers or work as a wedding photographer; always ask for the person’s name and if promised, send the photo. Don’t make excuses about the language barrier. If I don’t work with a fixer (a local man or woman, who can help with the translation) I will always have a phrasebook or try to use drawings and images that can help me to communicate.

15. Add depth to your images by the a 45 degrees light

Think carefully about the direction of light. By placing the subject at an angle of 45 degrees from the light source, you can create a wonderful effect of volume. As I made this picture (below), which was taken at a grocery store Georgia, using only natural light by a window on the right.

And one more…
ENJOY
It does not matter if you’re photographing people as a hobby or to pay your rent. Teach yourself to enjoy to process and not just the outcome (the finale image). Enjoy getting closer, getting to know each other and overcoming cultural barriers. If you do what you do with passion, your viewers will see it right away.


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How to Create Compelling Wide-Angle Portraits Using One Off-Camera Flash

By: Ken Koskela 

What are your most memorable moments as a photographer? As a travel photographer, my short list of stand-out moments include wandering alone in Namibia’s dead tree forest, photographing sunbeams from the top of a cliff in China, and capturing the Aurora Borealis on the coast of Iceland.

However, a year ago all of those amazing locations and moments were trumped by spending 30 minutes photographing a little girl outside her home near Villa de Leyva, Colombia (pictured above). This was the first time the girl had her portrait taken, let alone by a foreigner. With all the confidence of an experienced model, she literally stole the show that day. I believe the session is an important memory for her and instantly became my top moment photographing to date.
Ironically, two years ago I would not have even bothered taking this picture. I was focused on landscape and outdoor travel scenes. Also, if I’m honest with myself, I was somewhat intimidated by using artificial lighting and working with people as subjects. In April of 2014, I gave environmental portraiture a shot and have never looked back. It is now an important focus of my work.
This article will provide some guidance on how you can create images like the ones you see here, using a wide-angle lens and just one off-camera flash. But first, let me let you in on a little secret – it’s not that difficult.
Getting things right in camera is the important first step, which is the focus of this article. Processing your images is equally important, but I’ll cover that in a future article. So, let me start by providing you with the core techniques, then get into equipment and settings.

Use a (Relatively) Wide-Angle Lens

Lens choice is critically important in portraiture. Most portrait photographers reach for their 85mm or 105mm lens when heading out on a shoot. These focal lengths give a nice, realistic look to the subjects. However, I find myself drawn to portraits that have a surreal look to them, and include extra context that helps tell a story. Also, wide-angle lenses require you to shoot close to your subject, which also brings your viewer into the scene.
So, the first step is to leave your 85mm or 105mm in the bag, and grab a wide-angle lens. Most of the portraits you see here were created at 24mm using a full frame camera (use a 16mm for the same view if your camera has a cropped sensor). For me, this focal length is the perfect blend of reality and distortion. If you shoot much wider, elements closer to the lens, such as arms and hands, look too big or elongated. Also, wider focal lengths mean a much bigger background, which is usually not desirable.

Choose a Compelling Subject

Your subject is paramount. The Indonesian dockworker above is amazing. I spent 20 minutes photographing this guy and really had a difficult time choosing the best image. On the other hand, you could spend all day photographing me on the same dock, in front of the same ships, and have nothing but tossers at the end of the day.
I look for people that have experienced life. The ideal subject has a particular interesting quality about him or her, that makes them stand out from the rest. However, my subjects also have an everyday person quality about them. Finding subjects can be challenging, especially if you live in the suburbs of Chicago, like I do. I am a travel photographer and usually find my subjects in rural areas overseas. However, there are great subjects everywhere.
Clothing is critically important. If your 90-year old rural villager is wearing a hat that says, “I Love New York”, then you will want to politely ask him to take it off, or at least turn it around for the picture. The point is, don’t let out-of-context clothing ruin or weaken your shot.

Choose a Complementary Background

Your image is only as strong as the weakest part of it, which is often the background. This is because, as photographer Jim Zuckerman puts it, “The world is a compositional mess”. There are two important qualities you want out of your background:
First, at the very least, your background must be non-distracting. Although you can easily isolate your subject with a longer focal length, the background becomes a major consideration with wide-angle portraits. Beginner, and even intermediate photographers, can overlook even some obvious distractions in the background. You have probably seen them before: trees that look like they are growing out of the subject’s head, patchy spots of bright light in the scene, colorful objects, straight lines and geometric shapes. You essentially don’t want anything that competes with your subject for attention.
The image of the Indonesian dockworker below is non-distracting, but not much more. He is essentially standing in front of a shipping container, so this image won’t win any awards for its background. Nevertheless, it is still a good picture because of the strength of the subject.

Second, whenever possible, include a background that complements your subject by providing a context. I’ve shot many images with simple non-distracting backgrounds. But, my favorite pictures are those with a background that tells a story about the subject. This is why I love shooting in places like rural China and Indonesia. These countries have many ancient villages that provide opportunities for amazing backgrounds, such as in the image below.

I like to keep all evidence of modernity out of the background. I don’t like plastic stuff in my pictures. I don’t include modern looking buildings or cars. Instead, I prefer rural areas with weather-beaten buildings. Of course, this all depends on what you are after. The important thing is that the background complements the subject and does not distract from it.

Shoot in the Right Lighting Conditions

Because the majority of the background is not lit by the flash, many of the same outdoor photography lighting principles hold true, even if a flash is being used. Try shooting either early or late in the day (when the sun is low in the sky) or in overcast conditions. I actually prefer overcast conditions, but still shoot relatively early or late in the day.

Put Your Subjects at Ease

I don’t hire models, so some subjects work well and others not as well. What you want to avoid is a picture of your subject standing flat-footed, straight up and down, and holding a fake smile.
To help avoid this, it is a good idea to start your session by gaining their interest and confidence. If you have some images you’ve shot and processed, show them to give him or her an idea of what you are looking for, and hopefully pique their interest. This should communicate immediately that you are not looking for them to just stand there and smile. It should also show that the posing expectations will be basic.

Posing and Composition

Because I am shooting wide, I get quite close to my subjects and warn them ahead of time about this. For me, the eyes are a critically important part of the picture and must be very sharp. I focus on the closest eye, and re-focus frequently as I move around the subject slightly.
I generally ask him or her to look directly at the camera and not to smile, although not always. I then start moving slightly left or right, asking them to keep their head still and just follow the camera with their eyes. I usually shoot from slightly below eye level. I have them stand or sit at an angle to the camera. If the subject is standing, I have them put their weight on the back foot.
I like to include the subject’s hands in the composition. With a wide-angle lens, their hands in the foreground will look large, so try to strike a balance with the hands being prominent, but not too large. You can do this by simply positioning the hands closer to or farther away from the lens relative to their body.

Equipment and Settings

The Camera

Your camera should be equipped with an internal or external flash trigger to control your off-camera flash. Here is how I set things up:

• Start by leaving your flash or trigger initially turned off.
• Set your camera to manual mode.
• If the session is outdoors, I try for settings of ISO 100, f/7.1 and a shutter speed of around 1/160. You can adjust your f-stop and shutter speed to your preference, but keep in mind that you cannot go faster than your camera’s maximum flash sync speed.
• Make the necessary adjustments to slightly underexpose the background by 1/3 to 2/3 stop. I usually start by adjusting shutter speed, but go no slower than 1/60 and no faster than 1/160. If necessary, I will then adjust my f-stop to f/5.6 at the widest. Then, and only then, will I start bumping up the ISO.
• If you are indoors, you need to start with a higher ISO as a first step, and then make your adjustments to shutter speed and f-stop in the same manner.

Lighting

For 90% of my portraits, I use a single off-camera flash, diffused with an umbrella or softbox. The most important rule with flash is “don’t ruin your shot,” which is usually done by putting too much flash on your subject. Instead, you want to get a decent balance of natural and artificial light, so that the flash is undetectable to the untrained eye, but lights your subject brighter than the underexposed background.
Now, turn your flash and trigger on:

• Set your off-camera flash to manual mode.
• I typically position the flash at a 45-degree angle to the subject, about 2-3 feet (slightly less than a meter) away, higher than their head, angled downward.
• I usually start with 1/16 flash power when outdoors, and adjust from there until the subject stands out from the background, but does not look like they have been blasted with flash.

Post-Processing

You need to get things right in camera first. But, you will need to use a variety of post-processing techniques to get the effect you see in these images. I’ll coverthe techniques I use to process environmental portraits in a future article.
Thank you for reading, please share your wide-angle portraits and questions in the comments below.

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How to Shoot in Low Light – 9 Commonly Asked Questions

By: Bruce Wunderlich 

This image of Moon Rise over Marietta, Ohio was taken 20 minutes after sunset during the Blue 

Hour when the sun had set and the sky was a dark blue. Here the city lights make a great warm 

glow over the city.

According to British photojournalist Donald McCullin, “There is no such thing as bad light, just misunderstood light.” Many photographers consider low light to be bad light. The purpose of this article is to encourage you to not consider low light as inferior or unusable, but rather to look for subjects to photograph that react well to the available light.
Keep in mind that low light photography is not exclusively night photography. Low light photography opportunities may appear any time of the day as well. For instance, shooting waterfalls in low light allows you to shoot with a slow shutter speed, prevents over-exposure of the white water of the falls, and thereby creates a beautiful silky effect capturing the moving water. Using a flash will light up any subject, of course, but let’s take a look at how to improve your photography in naturally occurring low light. Some frequently asked questions about low light photography are addressed below.

Low Light Photography FAQs

Low light create very dramatic scenes. Dark storm clouds turned this potential sunrise into a great 

low light opportunity

My low light images are blurry. Would a better lens alleviate the blur?

The short answer to this question is YES, a fast lens with maximum f-stop of 1.8 for instance, will give you better results than a kit lens with a maximum f-stop of 3.5 or 5.6. But even the faster, more expensive lens, will give you undesired results with the wrong settings. The wider aperture opening will allow you to use a faster shutter speed resulting in a sharper image. These lenses with larger maximum apertures are called “fast” because they allow you to shoot with faster shutter speeds, due to more light that is entering your camera through the bigger opening.

What are the best camera settings for shooting in low light?

Manual Mode

Shooting in manual mode is paramount to successful low light photography as it allows you to control every functional aspect of your camera. You basically have three ways to get more light on your camera sensor: Shutter speed, Aperture and ISO. These three controls are called The Exposure Triangle, and each of these can have a positive or negative result to your image’s exposure. Therefore, learning how to use them for the best result is the key to low light photography. Your in-camera light meter will reveal where adjustments should be made to the camera settings, and well-exposed images will be the result.

Shutter Speed

If you are shooting handheld, a good rule of thumb is to set your shutter speed to match your focal length. For example, if you are shooting at 50mm your shutter speed shouldn’t be any slower than 1/50th of a second. Of course, if the subject of your photo is moving, then you will need to increase your shutter speed to be fast enough to freeze the action. Therefore, choosing a slower shutter speed will allow more light into your camera, but with that setting, the possibility of a blurry picture occurs.

Great Blue Heron in fight was the subject of this low light image. Exposure 1/250 of a second, 

f/5.6, ISO 1250. Using the combination of slower shutter speed and a higher ISO to create the 

blur of the wings and panning to match the speed of the fight of the heron.

Aperture

In most low light situations you will probably need to shoot with your aperture wide open. But if there is enough light to allow you to shoot with a smaller f-stop, it will increase your depth of field. The principle to consider: choosing a wider aperture will let more light into your camera, but will decrease your depth of field, which could lead to an important portion of your image being out of focus.

ISO

The higher the ISO number the more light your camera will record. The trade-off here is, the higher the ISO, the more digital noise you are adding to your image. Keep your ISO as low as possible and only increase your ISO after you have maxed out your shutter speed and aperture.

Shoot in RAW

For best results, shooting in RAW is recommended, for the simple reason that your camera will save more shadow detail in RAW format compared to the compressed format of jpg.
It is very helpful to learn how to check your histogram, and not just rely of what you see on your camera’s LCD screen. Use the histogram to check your exposure, and avoid clipping the highlights and shadows.

Using the low light at Huntington Beach California to create this black and white image with a 

five second exposure.

How do I take low light action shots?

Shooting action in low light can be very challenging and is almost always going to require you to shoot with your aperture at its widest setting. When your aperture is set, then your shutter speed should be adjusted to match the action that you are trying to freeze. Of course, depending on how low of a light situation you are shooting within, there may simply not be enough light. If this is the case, adjust the ISO to a higher setting until a good exposure is set. If your ISO setting is so high that you are getting an unacceptable amount of digital noise, you have two options: either add light with a flash or some other source, or live with the noise and try to remove some of it in post processing. Sometimes with the noise issue, it comes down to getting the shot with noise, or not taking the shot at all.

How do I reduce the digital noise level in low light images?

The simple answer to this question is to shoot at the lowest ISO that you can. But it is also a good idea to know the ISO at which your camera produces noise that you consider unacceptable. Always make sure that your exposure is correct. Even at a low ISO, if your image is underexposed you will have some noise in the shadowed areas.

An over casted  cloudy day at Blackwater Falls West Virginia allowed for this long exposure 

without blowing out the highlight.

How do I focus in low light?

Another reason for blurry images in low light is the fact that some cameras just aren’t manufactured to focus properly with less light. Try shining a light on your subject to give your camera enough light to focus. You also may use you manual focus ring to fine-tune your focus. Using the center focus dot may also help as it is usually a cross-point type which focus faster and more accurately than others.

How can I take pro-like images in low light?

Four things that most pros are going to do in low light:

1. Use a tripod
2. Shoot in RAW
3. Shoot in Manual Mode
4. Use the histogram

Low light makes great silhouettes.

How do I choose the best white balance for low light?

Set your white balance to match you environment –  Tungsten for indoors with light from a regular lightbulb, Fluorescent for light from fluorescent bulbs, Cloudy for low light created by an overcast day, and Shade for shooting in a shaded or shadowy area. But, one thing to remember if you are shooting in RAW format is that you can adjust your white balance later in post-processing. But if you are shooting JPGs it is very important to get your white balance correct in-camera. For this reason you should not shoot Auto white balance, it’s very hard, sometimes impossible, to correct later from a JPG.

Should I raise my ISO or lower my shutter speed in low-light?

Assuming that you are shooting with your aperture wide open, in most situations this is an easy one to answer. Adjust your shutter speed and raise your ISO as a last resort. Remember that raising your ISO is going to add more noise into the image. Most new DSLRs do a much better job with the noise levels in their higher ISO settings, but as mentioned earlier, it is a good idea to know at what noise level you are unwilling to accept, and what ISO that is for your camera. In situations where your subject is moving, it may become necessary to adjust the ISO to keep your shutter speed fast enough to freeze the action.

Fog created the low light in this fall image.

Why aren’t my low light shots sharp even when I shoot using a tripod?

Remember in most low light you will be shooting with your aperture wide open (or nearly so), hence your depth of field will be very shallow. Be extra careful to lock your focus (even try back-button focus) on the part of your image that needs to be in sharp focus. Case in point: when shooting a low light portrait, it is important to have the subject’s eyes in focus. If your subject is in motion, increase your shutter speed until it freezes the motion of the image. Also, make sure your camera’s vibration reduction is turned off, as this can actually create blur in your image even if shooting with a tripod.

Bonus tip

In low light the LCD screen on the back of your camera is going to look much brighter than the actual conditions. So, if your camera has an adjustment for the brightness of your LCD screen, turn it down so that your image will not appear to be overly bright when you view it, even if it is underexposed.

The trick to low light photography is to take control of your camera, and know that every action or setting will have a reaction. So, how is that different than photography in any light? It’s not, really. Just consider photography in low light as an opportunity to be creative. What subjects do you like to shoot in low light?

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