Working with a Pre-Shoot Portrait Checklist
“Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.”—Winston Churchill I think that the most important aspect of making portraits is communicating with the subject. It starts with initial contact and moves onto communication during the session but to make the best possible image, you need to start before a subject arrives. Here’s a few simple tips that will make your subjects look better which in turn...
Portrait Wednesdays: Back to the Sixties
In the book, One Face Fifty Ways by YouTubers Imogen Dyer and Mark Wilkinson demonstrate lighting, posing and other portrait techniques to capture the many looks and moods of a single person. This is similar to the approach Gary Bernstein used with Kay Sutton York in their 1988 book, Burning Gold, that I mentioned last week. With Wordy Wednesdays running for many years I thought it was time for a change and inspired by Burning Gold...
Portrait Wednesdays: Using an LED Ringlight
“I used to whiz down Sunset Boulevard in my open Kissel, with several red chow dogs to match my hair. Today, they’re sensible and end up with better health. But we had more fun.”—Clara Bow With Wordy Wednesdays running for so many years I thought it was time for a change and inspired by Gary Bernstein’s book Burning Gold decided to see how many Wednesdays I could publish a different portrait of the same model, in this case...
Portrait Wednesdays: The Many Moods of Pamela
“Look, I’m not an intellectual – I just take pictures.”—Helmut Newton With Wordy Wednesdays running so many years I thought it was time for a change and inspired by Gary Bernstein’s book Burning Gold decided to see how many Wednesdays I could publish a different portrait of the same model, in this case Pamela Simpson. Over the next who-knows-how-many Wednesdays I’ll be showcasing a different image of her...
Portrait Wednesdays: The Wedding Portrait
The new book, One Face Fifty Ways by YouTubers Imogen Dyer and Mark Wilkinson is an idea book about portraiture using one subject—Ms. Dyer— and one photographer—Mr. Wilkinson demonstrating lighting, posing and other techniques to capture the many looks and moods of a single person. This is similar to the approach Gary Bernstein used with Kay Sutton York in their 1988 book, Burning Gold, that I mentioned last week. With Wordy...
Some Portrait Posing Guidelines
Once upon a time, I attended a photography workshop on portrait posing featuring a well-respected speaker who was known for his classic portraiture. It went something like this: He started by demonstrating how he like to pose a subject, which was basically put them in pose A, then pose B, then Pose C. After a few minutes of this demonstration, he asked me to show the group how to pose the model he had been working with and I didn’t...
Following the Trends: ‘More Portraits Please’
“The photographer, even in fashion and portraiture, has to have a standpoint. It’s important to know what you stand for, no? Most people just take pictures, but they stand for nothing.”—Peter Lindbergh Last year, at the suggestion of one of this blog’s readers, we added a new section to the right-hand column called “Top Posts.” The idea being that anyone who was new to the blog, would be able to see the most popular five or six...
