Shooting a ¾-View? Pick a Spot to Look At

SCOTT KELBY

One of the three most popular positions for formal portraits is the ¾-view, which shows about three-quarters of your subject’s face—they’re looking away from the camera at around a 45° angle (as if they’re looking at something off to the side of where the photographer is standing, and because their head is turned slightly like this, you see both eyes, but you don’t see the ear on the other side of their head). But this tip isn’t how to pose a ¾-view, it’s about how to get a more realistic-looking ¾-view without seeing too much of the whites of your subject’s eye (if you get too much of the whites of the eyes, it looks kind of weird. Okay, it looks kind of creepy). The trick is: don’t just have your subject look off to the left or right—choose a particular object in the room that they should focus on each time they do the ¾-view. Once you give your subject a spot to look at, take a test shot and see if you can see their irises clearly and there’s not too much of the whites of the eyes showing. If you do see lots of white, they’re looking too far away—have them turn their head a little more toward the camera and focus on a different object in the room (if there’s nothing for them to focus on, put an extra light stand where you want them to look, and raise the top of the stand to where you want their eyes to go). Also, this picking-a-spot-for-the-¾-view technique is particularly helpful when working with professional models, because they’ll be hitting a number of different poses during the shoot. If you give them a spot to look at each time they go for that ¾-view, they’ll hit that same spot every time.