Well hey there!
I’m Khalipha Ntloko, writing this all the
way from Cape Town, South Africa! I’m the brains behind the Always Rise Blog,an Inspiration, Lifestyle and Beauty blog that really is a journal highlighting
my growth as a woman within these 3 categories. I’m only 23 years old and I
believe that I have many wonderful things to do in life so my blog is a space
that not only shares the aspirations I have but also invites women to be
inspired so that they too, can rise up and be phenomenal in their own unique
and beautiful way.
I’ve recently tapped into my ever-growing
love for photography, particularly portrait photography. My aspiration is to
become a sought-after [female] portrait photographer in South Africa, but I’m
actually self-taught and using a camera that is rather limiting. But, much like
life, I’ve learned to get better through these limitations, and I want to share
a few tips that I have picked up along the way to help you take better
portraits for either your own blogs or personal use.
DON’T
TRY TO COPY
In the beginning of my photography journey,
I took to a lot of social media and Google pictures to source ideas. And
whenever I found a picture I really liked, I would work hard at trying to
recreate the exact same photo.
Little did I forget that I have a
particular camera that can’t capture certain things. And I don’t have the same
makeup products (or techniques) to recreate certain looks. And don’t get me
started on a studio set up and lighting
As I got frustrated, I realised that recreating
an image to the tee just doesn’t work for me. So I started going back to the
drawing board and asked myself why I liked certain pictures. Was it the dark
shadows and lighter highlights? Was it the super close of the skin that I
loved? Was it the particular shade of black and white that was used? These were
some of the questions I started asking myself which helped me create a
particular kind of image I wanted for my portraits that I now think about whenever
I take photographs. What is the mood that I
want to give off in my portraits? The emotion that I want to capture instead of copying someone else’s photo? When it
comes to portraits (or photography in general), be original. It’s the most
beautiful way to stand out.
REFRAIN
FROM AUTO
I’m sure having an automatic car is a dream
because of how easy it would be to drive. I mean, a car doing about 80% of the
work for you sounds like a breeze. Well, the same could be said for the camera
setting ‘Auto’.
As much as the ‘Auto’ setting on your
camera easily does the adjusting according to the lighting and environment for
you, my advice is to rather stay away from the ‘Auto’ setting. In watching a
number of YouTube tutorials and then actually practicing what I was learning,
I’ve noticed that 1) capturing images on ‘Auto’ doesn’t make you any different
from a smartphone camera user, and 2) there’s a big and personal power in
capturing images with settings that you have taken the time to get accustomed
to. It no longer becomes a case of the camera doing all the work but you’re
now, in collaboration with the camera, beginning to create art.
My advice is to play around with the ‘AV’
setting. This is the ‘Aperture Priotity’ where you set the camera at a certain
f-number, whilst the camera selects a shutter speed to match this f-number so
that you get better exposure based on what the lighting conditions are in the
environment you’re shooting in. This setting is great for landscapes, where you
use a large f-number to get a bigger depth of field and crisper background. For
portraits, a lower f-number creates a smaller depth of field which blurs out
the background and brings more focus to your subject (hello Bokeh!)
FIND
THE ‘ART’ IN PORTRAITS
Believe it or not, the word ‘art’ is
literally in the word ‘portrait’; this is how I approach my own works of
portrait photography. How can I create art in the images I want to capture of
someone?
I have no PhD in Selfie Taking, like Kim
Kardashian-West, but I know I want my work to be more than just a captured
pose. I want to capture a mood, a real and raw emotion that selfies don’t
always capture. There’s a freedom of creativity when it comes to portraits that
I hope you’ll see not only in my self-portraits but in the works of other
photographers.
Much like what I mentioned in my first
point, be original in the images you capture. During my years of studying
Psychology in my undergraduate, I learned that we could all look at a
particular object at the same time, but our perspective and interpretations of
that object won’t all be the same. I think the same goes for photography.
During my ‘Photography’ Instagram
Highlights, I remember showing my followers the same picture but only changed
the temperature during editing – one was more warm, the other cool. I loved the
warm version of the photo but I received an incredible favour for the cooler
picture, with someone mentioning how much better my skin stood out. Meanwhile,
the cooler tone image made my skin more red, which I didn’t like.
With that said, don’t be afraid to stick to
our own artistic guns. I’m aware that people will not always love the work I
put out, that there will be critiques and unsavoury opinion. But in the end, I
will always produce something that I will be proud of. And that’s something I
hope you’ll remember. To find the art in the photographs you capture in future.
Photographers don’t get enough clout for the hard work we put in but I hope
that this post will inspire you to rise up and find your own art that you’ll
always be proud of.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/
Instagram: https://instagram.
(Thank you so much to Khalipa for writing this. We found it truly inspiring and really helpful! As with all our collabs, you can find our post on her blog too. We wrote a post all about Makeup Revolution, which you all know we love, since it launched in South Africa only 2 days ago. Thanks again to Khalipa, and we hope you all enjoyed. For more information on portrait photography, there is a really great source here.
Natasha and Emily x )
