Yoga Photography: How Taking The Right Pictures Help You Improve Your Poses

A lot of fitness enthusiasts believe in yoga as one of the best exercises there is. Yoga combines the benefits of exercise, mental health, and physical fitness through meditation and acrobatic movements.

From the yoga practice at divein.com came what is now known as yoga photography, which focuses on recording yogis during their exercise and meditation practices. Yoga photography is a trendy type of photography that helps both photographers and models to achieve quick fame on social media.

Although yoga photography requires pretty much the same equipment and skillsets needed for most photography jobs, there are great ways to achieve the best results in your yoga photos. Six (6) of the best yoga photography tips to help improve your photoshoot are summarized here.

1. Ensure The Right Camera Settings

For best results, decide on your camera settings beforehand each click, but according to your subject’s pose, location, and lighting.

• Shutter Speed: Your shutter speed is determined by whether your subject will be moving or not. If your subject will be in motion, you’ll need faster speed. If not, your default portrait settings are fine.
• Aperture Setting: Aperture settings depend on what you want to capture. A wide-angle aperture blurs the background to focus on your subject the spotlight while a narrow-angle aperture creates sharp foregrounds and backgrounds.
• ISO: When switching between shutter speed and aperture values, the ISO must always be taken into consideration since it is the ISO setting that determines the darkness and brightness of the picture. The higher the ISO value, the more sensitive the digital sensor of your lens will be to light.

• Use Different Perspectives

Your shooting perspective is a significant element in creating the shots that you want. The commonest shooting perspective is at eye level. This simply requires the photographer to stand and point a camera at a subject and click away.

On the other hand, changing perspective adds a bit of a twist to the photograph and brings out a new dimension to the yogi’s pose. Such variations include low-angle shots and high-angle shots. Each of these puts a different focus on the yogi and adds a new dimension to the photograph.

• Be Mindful of Backgrounds

Posing a yogi before an impressive background can make a lot of difference. Try and remove background distractions as much as possible to keep the focus on the subject, which is the yogi.

While selecting a background to use for your yoga shoot, try and choose one that involves nature and beauty because these can add dollops of dynamism to your pictures.

• Use Natural Lighting

Although artificial lighting can need focus attention to detail and mastery of shading effects can be used to get the best results, the use of natural lighting to take photographs can be an excellent approach to try out in a yoga photo session. You must be careful when using shadows on your subject when you’re taking photographs using natural light sources.

You can get the best of natural light for your yoga shoot in the mornings just before full sunrise or in the evenings just before full sunset. At these times, you are guaranteed diffused sunlight instead of direct sunlight. As has been proven time and again, diffused sunlight can dramatically improve your photographs. 

• Vary Your Distance

You can get a lovely range of pictures by varying the shooting distance between the camera and the yogi. A longer distance from the subject produces a wide-angle shot. Wide-angle shots help your composition to better integrate the model with the environment when framing, depicting yogis as integral elements of their environment.

Medium shots are a step closer to the subject and can produce a picture that is focused more on your subject. The closest range to your subject is a close-up that emphasizes specific parts of your subject, not their whole body.

From wide-angle shots to medium shots to close-ups, you should try them all out. They can add up and create a stunning collection that can provide other people with valuable tips in yoga photography.

• Edit When Post-processing

Few yoga photographers skip post-processing and editing, which allows opportunities for correction and enhancement of key details, as these cannot be done during the actual shooting.

Typically, image post-processing software used for photo editing allows for maximum flexibility. At the same time, you can always revert or undo changes you don’t like after you’ve made them. To achieve top quality work, you can either learn to use your photo editing software effectively or outsource the process to professional editing services.

Takeaways

Yoga photography is the newest, in-demand photography trend and it is still evolving. Great photographers know to take advantage of great pictures that can be taken during a yoga photo shoot. For the best results from a yoga photoshoot, be particular about your camera settings. Try out varying your shooting angles and distances from the subject. Pick a lovely environment to shoot in. And never leave off the post-processing step. All these can help add perfection to your work.