Photo tip-catchlights and focus points.

If you want to bring more oomph into your portrait shots try getting catchlights. This is the reflection of light in the eyes that makes them appear alive. Many artists use catchlights in there portraits to give life to their painting, next time you look at a portrait check out the eyes for catchlights. They can be created using daylight/natural light either directly into the eye or reflected off surfaces such as snow, water, photographers reflectors etc. It can also come from off camera flashes and other manmade lighting sources. I personally like natural light best. A marble is one of the easiest ways of detecting the position to get your best catchlights, make a fist and pop the marble into the little groove in your pointer finger, now simply move your hand and marble around until you get a good reflection, at around the positions, not the time, of 2 or 10 O'clock are best, but any position were you get reflections, are fine. Now that you have the right direction place your model here and take your photo. Whenever shooting people, with the odd exception, always focus on the eyes. If you have an slr type camera you can generally do this by changing your focus points on board the camera or focusing manually. With a point and shoot type camera you can use your central focus. To do this position the little red dot in the centre of your camera on the eyes, half depress your shutter release button to lock it on this position, holding it half way down, then reframe your photo as you wish and fully depress the shutter. This will make sure the eyes are nice and crisp. You can also use this method to get different effects as I did for the photo of S. below holding out the lolly pop. Using a shallow Depth Of Field or the portrait setting on your camera put the focus on the object you want sharp and depending on the capabilities of your camera the other object on different plains should blur either slightly or a lot depending on you settings.

I have included some examples below.

The catchlights are in the right of his eyes

The focus was placed on the lolly pop here, creating a soft blur on everything not in the same plain or level.Again the catchlights are on the right side
Even pets look better with catchlights too.