Taking pictures of people

In my life I tried all of photography genres, except nude I think, because I never had money to pay to the models and my girlfriend will not do it for me. So I tried all, landscape, macros... let's just say all, but the most difficult I find people!
It was very difficult for me to take pictured of people in different situations, maybe because people in our city never trust a guy with camera, because it can be soviet agent. Who knows?

Difficulty in taking pictures of people is mainly in expressing their emotions through the picture, because when we are taking pictures we are in different mood as people who will look at it few days further. We can see it, as extremely sensual portrait at the moment, but day after it will look to you as photo for someone’s ID. So points is you should not be controlled by your mood, when you are looking for capture, once I read a book by some Czech photographer and it was his opinion and one thing he said was true, don't listen to music when you are taking photos, listen to environment around you and you will feel the mood. When I will have more time I will find it and translate some more passages from it.
Personally I prefer not-arranged portraits, pictures of people in their everyday’s life, without make up or studio lights and all. Portraits of real people in real situations and also real feelings and real emotions! Taking picture of somebody who is posing is way easier, of course if it is professional model, with no professional models it’s way much harder. But the point is, made-up model with studio lights looks too "forced" for me. It reminds me to the painted portraits from the 18th century, where everybody must be perfect, perfect view, perfect skin everything is just perfect. But I'm not saying that you can't find nice made-up portraits, it all depends on your opinion.

Technical side

Ok, so after some "feelings-art-emotion" blah-blahs we are getting to the most useful part for you. It's technical side of capturing people. Because we have some composition rules in photography, don't understand word "rules" like you have to take all of your pictures by "The Big Book" or something, no, but when for example you're using the rule of golden rectangle it looks better. Believe me, it was invented by ancient Greeks. But in some occasions there's no need to use it and your picture looks better. So this is basics of composition, try not to place your "object" in the middle of your picture. And one of the most important rule is: Your "object" should have somewhere to look. It means that you should leave some free place in front of the face and eyes of the "object". So if he/she isn't looking straight to your camera it will looks like "object" is looking somewhere far, far away and it makes really good effect. Do not! Do not place your "objects" looking to the edge of your photography, it really looks creepy. But in some occasions it makes your picture better, photography is art and sometimes you have to break the rules to get better effect.
Let's talk about your equipment, like lenses, lights or flash. What you should use and how it use. So now it also depends on what is your goal, if you want to take picture of people by their everyday activities, you should use lens with bigger focal length like from 200mm to 300mm. It's very useful, because in countries of middle and Eastern Europe, like I am living, you can loose your camera if you are too close to your "object". But for the normal portraits or if it's possible for you to get closer the best are something from 75mm to 135mm, you can use everything till 200, it's just personal. But again the point is not to use short focal lenses, because it leads to deformation of the face, closer you are it's more visible, for example if you will use 35mm lens and will try to take direct portrait it will looks like you used fish-eye. So use short focal length only when it's your point to get face deformed.
So let's talk something little about light. Light is the most important photography.
In portraits, you have to learn use light properly, because light and shadows are making our faces looking 3D, so avoid using straight lights in to the objects face. It will make it looking like it's from wax. In case of casual portraits it's more difficult with light, because you should not have shadows on your face! Everything- nose, lips, eyebrows are dropping shadows! so you have to play a while in your studio to make the perfect light. If you're using flash never, I say never use it directly, it cause red-eye effect. You can reflex it from walls, roof or piece of white paper attached to the flash.
Of course you can use light how you want if your "product" will look good. It's on you. Like I said before, photography is art.

So I think I just wrote some basics about capturing people. It's really difficult theme, so it will take ages to write all the details.
But all of the secrets you can find in the books.
First I want to introduce to you is Photography Posing Secrets, it's about how to get best poses and emotions from people you are about to capture with your camera.
Click - the book can be found here
And second is Discover The Secrets Of portrait photography by Paul Courtney, it's the basics of portraits and the techniques which are use by professionals.
Here you can find it!
Theese publications aren't so expansive first is 15 USD and second is 10 I think, but they will help you in your photo career.
So enjoy the books guys! Bye

P.s. I apologies for my english sometimes it's horrible :)