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Useful Photography Tip

Useful Photography Tip #104: Angle a Nose Against Skin When Shooting a Portrait

Chris Gampat
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08/10/2014
1 Min read

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Phase One IQ250 more with Nat (1 of 2)ISO 1001-160 sec at f - 2.8

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When you’re shooting a portrait of a person, keep in mind that one of the facial features that everyone is self-conscious about is their nose. If you shoot it straight on, it can look a little large and if you shoot it at too extreme of an angle it can be downright unflattering. The secret to making a nose look better has to do with angling it at just the right way to still look natural. And guess what–folks that have been doing selfies and photos back in the Myspace days have been doing it for years.

The secret has to do with tilting the face at an angle just a bit to the left or the right. This helps to hide the size of the nose and also makes the eye think that it is smaller than it actually really is by making it blend in with the rest of the skin on the face/cheek.

What also helps is proper lighting. Harsh, direct light coming from either direction could leave a shadow that makes the nose look enormous. So a great idea is to use a reflector and/or overexpose the image enough so that the shadows are very subtle or completely gone.

Trust us–folks will love you for your portraits that much more when you actually put the effort into posing.

 

face nose portrait posing selfie shadows skin
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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