Usually, I position my face directly over the camera. This puts the eyes in
a slightly upward position, increasing the appearance of the catchlights (see
page 39). If the camera position is too high to make this possible, I position
my face on the main-light side of the camera, never beneath it and never to
the shadow side of it. Both would decrease the catchlights.
With my face directly to the side of the camera, the eyes appear to be look-
ing directly into the lens, even though the subject is actually looking at me.
When looking from the side of the camera, a common mistake that my new
photographers make is getting their face too far from the camera. This makes
the eyes of the subject appear to be looking off-camera—which is fine if that
is the intention and not a mistake.
When the eyes of the subject look into the lens (or very close to it), the
portrait seems to make eye contact with the viewer. An overwhelming ma-
jority of our senior clients prefer the intimate feeling of eye contact as op-
posed to the more reflective portraits where the eyes look off-camera, butFLATTER THE CLIENT 37Having the subject look at your eyes (rather
than a spot on the wall or some other inan-
imate object) gives their eyes more spark in
the portrait.