When shooting portraits -

When shooting portraits

Equipment: You will need a lens and a flash. Your ideal portrait lens should be of range 50mm to 100mm with a wide aperture, such as f/1.4, f/1.8, f/2.0, f/2.8. With a wider aperture, you can give your background in the photo a blurry feel, which in photographic terms is called bokeh. Just keep this in mind, the longer the focal length, the more bokeh you can give to the background (eg. 85mm @ f/2.8 creates more blur than 50mm @ f/2.8). However, this is the thing, the wider the aperture of the lens, the more expensive it is! Flash to portrait work is very important as a fill-in light. NO! Do not use your onboard flash. Use an external flash. This is to give your flash more power, and to eliminate red-eye, which is caused by a flash placed at eye-level to your subject.
Heads-up on buying equipment, click here!

Skills: On you camera, turn the mode dial to aperture priority (A or Av). This will allow you to adjust the aperture manually, but all the others in auto. Set the f-stop to the lowest number you can. This can depend on your lens. Now, add in your external flash. To make things simple, the flash can be in auto mode. Now, you are ready to shoot like a pro!

For a more detailed tutorial, please visit here!