This article explores a few quick pointers that you can keep in mind when attempting to shoot perfect portraits. There are many rules, many tutorials and plenty of tips and advice out there. Google will give you thousands! But this article will sum up some of the most important ones. Enjoy!

Quick Tips
Shallow Depth of Field: A wide aperture setting on your camera ensures that you get a professionally blurred background that brings the focus of your image onto your model.

Sharp Focus: Eyes are the window to the soul! Therefore ensure that your models eyes are clearly and sharply in focus. If you're struggling, manually focus the lens of the camera yourself to make sure you get sharp, clear results.

Balance the lighting: You can use a reflector to bounce light into the eyes of your model and make use of the shadows to create a flattering and natural lighting result.

Colours: Think carefully about which colours compliment your model. In the above image, pale colours, muted tones and shades of brown and grey help to compliment the model nicely whilst also adding a great contrast between hair and skin colour.

Things to Avoid

Look out for those photo 'bombs'- people, animals, objects, cars e.t.c that might be lurking behind your model, ready to pounce at the exact moment you have the perfect shot framed. Check the models hair, their clothes and their pose. Don't cut off heads, hands and feet unless you really mean to!

Don't torture them, ensure they aren't focusing directly into sun and therefore giving you very beautiful 'squinty' images. You can use the sun on many occasions to create some beautiful bokeh though!

Using the aperture priority mode on your camera will allow you to select a wide aperture setting of around 1.4. This can create a professional looking shallow depth of field and the nice blur you see in great portraiture.