Five Portrait Habits That Quietly Ruin Otherwise Good Photos

A fast portrait lens can make it dangerously easy to lean on blur and call it style. The video focuses on the small portrait habits that quietly flatten your results, even when focus and exposure look “right.”

Coming to you from James Reader, this practical video lays out five portrait mistakes Reader keeps seeing in his own archive, starting with the one most people treat like a feature: shooting wide open by default. He talks about using a fast prime because it feels like the whole point of buying it, then shows how that habit can leave one eye soft and the focal point unclear when you zoom in. The example he calls out is the 85mm f/1.2, where the shallow depth of field looks pleasing until you notice the focus is not landing where the viewer expects. He pushes a simple question before pressing the shutter: what actually needs to be in focus in this frame? He also hints at a shift in his own settings, where headshots often land closer to f/2.8 or f/4 to keep both eyes clean.

The second mistake is the one that will annoy anyone who has chased perfect detail for years: portraits can be too sharp. Reader frames sharpness as a choice, not a default, especially when the goal is a soft, dreamy, slightly painterly feel where harsh detail can fight the mood. He points out how foreground texture, like grass, can steal attention if everything is tack sharp, even when the subject is posed well. Instead of letting modern glass dictate the look, he suggests controlling sharpness with tools and editing decisions, including using a diffusion filter like a black mist filter. He also describes a specific editing habit that may surprise you if you usually push clarity and global sharpening, and he ties that choice to how modern lenses and sensors render skin and small textures.

Then he pivots into a mistake that has nothing to do with settings and everything to do with what you leave in, or cut out, without noticing. Bad framing shows up as awkward crops through joints, like chopping at the wrist or ankle, which can make a portrait feel unfinished even when you cannot immediately name why. Reader’s fix is not complicated, but it demands attention at the edges of the frame, not just the face. He recommends cropping in places that feel natural, like mid-forearm instead of the wrist, and mid-thigh instead of the knee, plus leaving extra breathing room when you are unsure. He also talks about communicating your framing to the model so posing matches the crop, which changes where hands land and whether the body language reads as intentional.

If you have ever looked back at a shot you liked and then noticed one small thing you cannot unsee, Reader’s examples will feel familiar. He mentions scanning all four edges before shooting, because distractions do not announce themselves when you are focused on expression and focus points. The video also moves beyond the camera into choices that usually get treated as “extra,” like wardrobe color against a location and simple props that give hands something to do, but Reader connects those decisions to whether the viewer knows what to look at. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Reader.

If you would like to continue learning about the art of portraiture, be sure to check out our range of tutorials on the subject in the Fstoppers store.