Pointers for Taking Good Pictures
- Eye Glasses and Sun Glasses. Eyeglasses can reflect a flash back into the camera effectively covering a person's eye.
- For best results, please have your subjects remove all eyeglasses and sunglasses.
- It is not enough to simply move the glasses to the top of a person's head, this can still cause a flash back.
- White Garments and Shiny Fabrics. When taking a picture of a subject wearing a white garment or a shiny fabric, try to include from only the shoulders and up.
- The large area of white will fool the camera into thinking the subject is over lit and will darken skin tones considerably.
- On subjects with normally dark complexions, this can result in their faces being turned into merely a silhouette of themselves.
- Personal Appearance. Your subjects want to look their best on the Photo ID.
- Please take this into consideration when scheduling them for photos.
- Try to schedule times at the beginning of work for your subjects when they are freshest and look their best.
- Give your subjects a few days notice of their scheduled time so they can come to the session prepared.
- Backgrounds and Lighting. Try to have a consistent background for your pictures.
- Avoid taking pictures in front of ANY reflective surface such as a projection screen, a glass wall, or a wall painted with a high gloss paint. Under no circumstances should any type of projection screen be used as a back drop! The reflected light will severely distort the image.
- A medium blue or medium green background reproduces the widest range of skin tones the best.
- If the above backgrounds are not available, use a non-reflective, flat finish wall (or other suitable vertical surface) with no markings or attachments to it within the frame of the picture.
- Taking pictures outdoors can make your photos unevenly lit due to passing clouds or tree branches swaying in the breeze.
- Tree branches or shrubbery swaying in the breeze can make your background look "fuzzy".
- The wind will tend to blow your subject's hair around.
- Taking photos in a subject’s daily work environment can cause the viewer to be distracted from the subject of the picture to the background.
- Try not to have any computer screens in the picture as the data on the screen may be able to be read on the ID card and may constitute a breach of security or constitute a HIPPA violation if the wrong information is photographed.
- Camera Settings. Although differing environments will dictate your actual settings for best results, these are a good starting point. Not all cameras will have the features referred to here, and various makes and models may refer to these features by other names.
- Red Eye Reduction is a feature used to minimize those glowing red retinas that appear in the pupils of people's eyes when using a flash. If your camera has this feature, it should be enabled.
- Fill Flash is a feature that uses the camera's flash to reduce the shadows on a subject caused by uneven lighting in the room. If this feature is available, it should be enabled.
- When choosing a picture size, go for the largest available. The more picture elements(pixels) we have to work with, the better the final product will be.
- When choosing the resolution of the image, choose the highest available. Once again, this delivers more pixels and a much finer image.
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