The studio portrait

The studio portrait

The main difficulty in the studio is to define your light, your background and direct your model.

Of course, most of the time you will be working with people who do not know you, and the reactions and desires will always be different from one person to another.

It will therefore be necessary first to establish a real relationship of trust with the person who will find themselves in front of the lens and explain to him what your ideas are as well as his own.

Everyone who is about to spend a moment in front of a camera needs to be reassured.

Once the session begins, you have to adapt to your model and not "endure" the situation. It is the photographer who must set the tempo and ask the model to take certain attitudes, or to move, or to make a movement with his hands.

While photographing, you have to keep talking, encourage your model, make her understand what you are looking for ... Today with digital, the first views are part of a warm-up moment. These photo sessions does not need to be too long. For me the maximum duration is two hours. 1 hour of time is sufficient if there is no change of lighting or clothes.

Generally during the session, I show the result on the camera. The final selection of the selected photos will be made at the end of the session. I offer several options (after retouching): From sending digital photos to a personal album book.

Prepare your material in advance

To be fully operational at the time of the shoot, you must have anticipated in technical terms. The choice of its material, the adjustment of its camera and the choice of the lens (generally between 70 and 200mm) must be established before the shots. So at the time of shooting, we know how to focus only on the image.

The defect of beginners, especially if they have a lot of photo equipment, is to worry more about their equipment and technical settings than the person who is facing them!

Choose the background and the light. I mainly use 5 backgrounds (white, black and 3 levels of gray)

The aesthetic anticipation: it will be a question of choosing its background and measuring the light well where the model will be asked to place itself.

All styles are possible.

Soft lights to better highlight all the nuances of a face.

Or on the contrary, in order to produce graphic images, favor focused and contrasting lights.

The important thing in all cases is to focus on the eyes, because they are the ones who give a portrait its fixation point.

I will come back to the shooting technique later on in the blog.

Don't hesitate to ask me questions.