Shooting Portraits: From Idea to the Final Images

Every shoot starts with an idea about what I want to depict. It could be something conceptual and elaborate, but can just as well be something more direct and contained. The idea could be about capturing environmental portraits of creatives, with the portraits meant to depict the creative's process, tools, space, and quirks. Or it could be about photographing a friend in a way that highlights a certain aspect of their personality (quiet, flamboyant, serious, jovial, ) or physicality (muscle definition, how they wear their hair, long legs, acrobatic skills, ...). Or it could be simply about the quality of natural light in a particular space. I recently collaborated on a conceptual shoot with a model, and it was her who proposed the idea.

Developing A Vision For The Shoot

Once I have an idea for a shoot, the next step is to start putting together a rough moodboard for the shoot. The main goal of this step is to develop a vision for the shoot together with the model. The model adds their preferences and ideas, and  I add mine. There may not always be contributions to the moodboard from the model, but it still helps to share this early mood board with the model in order to give them an idea of what lines you are thinking along. I find that Pinterest works the best for this. Also note that the purpose is not to replicate images that are out there, but rather to gather ideas about poses, angles of shooting, costume and props etc. The following is a mood board that the model and I put together for the recent shoot. Check out my Pinterest profile for more examples of shoot mood boards.

Developing A Plan For the Shoot

Out of the discussions with the model and the initial mood board come out the following:

1) Location for the shoot (as well as the day and the time, based on the weather and the position of the sun in the sky)

2) Props and clothing options for the shoot

3) The final shot list (and accompanying examples from the mood board)

I like to use OneNote for putting together the shot list because it lets me think easier by having the ability to move things around, and having the ability to jot notes and annotations by hand using a stylus. I then export the note as a PDF and also take along a printed copy to the shoot. The purpose of the shot list is not necessarily a strict adherence to the plan, but rather to give you and the model base poses and ideas to riff on in the moment. There is always space for serendipity, and the shot list is there if you can't think of anything, or to get you out of the current groove of thought.

The following is the shot list I developed for the same shoot for which you see the mood board above.

It goes without saying that the night before the shoot you make sure that the camera batteries are charged, clean the lenses, check that there are SD cards in the camera and that they are not full, and so on. You hopefully only make the mistake of showing up without the batteries charged just once in your career.

During The Shoot

I like to sit down for a chat over a cup of coffee/tea with the model before the shoot. This is particularly important if you've never worked with the model before, but equally as important even if you are just photographing a friend. We'll just chit chat about stuff, and then go over the plan for the shoot. We will sometimes also walk around the space together, examining the quality of light, scene elements, and I explain the compositional choices I am going to try. I also give a short posing walk through to the model to explain the basics of posing if they haven't posed in front of a camera before.

When photographing the model, I like to keep a conversation going, explaining what I am looking to see from the image, talking out loud about what I am trying at the moment, directing the posing, directing the gaze of the model, and influencing the expressions of the model through the use of jokes or prompts if needed. One of the techniques I use in order to make the model feel more at ease and less conscious in front of the camera is to complement aspects of the image instead of the model.  For instance, instead of saying that the model looks beautiful, I'd say for instance that the light is really beautiful. Or I'd say that that pose worked really well. I shoot on burst mode with continuous auto-focus and eye detection enabled. I generally keep my shutter speed at or above 1/250s, but will vary it for some creative choices. My go-to lenses for shooting portraits are 50mm f1.8 and 85mm f1.8, both of which I typically shoot stopped down to f2.8-f4.5, unless otherwise required.

I keep the shoot light and fun, and try to keep the shoot to under 2 hours, with a break in between. At no point should it feel like a chore, either to you or to the model. Also, I carry tissues, wet wipes etc with me during shoots, in order to clean up any surfaces that the model would be sitting on while posing, in order to avoid getting dirt on their clothes. A lint roller also comes in handy.

Culling and Shortlisting

After coming home from the shoot, the first step is to load the images on my ingest station, which is a linux machine. I use Geeqie to do a couple of quick rounds of culling to remove the out of focus images and the duplicates. I am still left with hundreds of images at this stage. I will generally do quick edits on one or two images using CaptureOne, and send them to the model. In the days that follow, I will come back to the images with fresh eyes and do a few more rounds of culling. Once I have whittled down the images to about 20-40, I send unedited previews of those to the model for them to pick their favorites. I also mark my favorites, but I keep this information from the model in order to not influence their choices. I will sometimes also discuss the editing choices with the model.

Editing and Final Delivery

The superset of the model's favorites and my favorites becomes the final set. It may take the model a few days to decide their favorites. In the meantime, I get started on editing my favorites using CaptureOne. I have also recently been using Affinity Photo to handle some edits which CaptureOne can't. I take about a week to 10 days to edit the images, and will let some edits sit for a few days and revisit with fresh eyes. I don't do any extensive editing, choosing instead to get things right in camera. In addition to basic color adjustments and cleanup of stray hairs, lint, wrinkles on clothing etc, I also do color grading of the images to emphasize a certain mood. Once all the images are edited, I export web-view resolution versions (for use on Insta, websites etc) and high resolution versions (for print etc) and share them with the model. Here are the final images from the aforementioned shoot.

Collaborating For A Shoot

I am open to collaborations for shoots. If you have an idea and would like to work together with me, feel free to reach out to me via the Contact Form or message me on one of the following IG accounts: