How To Shoot Panoramic Portraits

On this video, photographer Jay P. Morgan from the Slanted Lens demonstrates how he takes panoramas with portraits inside them add lights and make a more creative shot.

We usually don’t think of panorama images as something where we intentionally focus on people. Yes some panoramas might have people (in many cases they might be blurry since they tend to move as we are talking different shots) but you can actually deliberately shoot panoramas in a way that will have your human subject well lit, in focus and stationery.

The technique which Morgan demonstrates in this video starts from a vertical portrait (he shoot every image vertical with a Sony A7R II for maximum resolution) and using the Syrp Genie mini (which we reviewed here last year and really loved) and a L shaped bracket he captures the rest of the scene automatically via the app).

Taking a good panorama portrait isn’t easy – not technically (in terms of exposure throughout the scene) but also not in terms of composition – in many of the images Morgan took the subject seem a bit small in the frame – finding a way to have your subject large enough and still have the general composition right can be tricky (this is something that requires much more practice, trail and error). Morgan has a few tips – shooting the subject a few times and making sure enough of the image is in focus in terms of depth of field (and even getting the subject closer to the camera – which will require a pretty closed aperture).

You can find lot more lighting tutorials on our photography lighting section here on LensVid, and you can find all of Jay P. Morgan’s videos here on LensVid on the following link.

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.