portrait

How to get the most out of a professional photo shoot

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I’ve already written an article about how to pose for a great portrait photo. This one puts together tips for preparing for the session. This advice will help to ensure that the shoot goes smoothly and that the resulting photos fully meet your expectations.

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Choosing a photographer

Every photographer has their own style and their own way of working, and it’s important that the kind of images they make correspond to the kind of images you want. Don’t expect them to produce a completely different kind of portrait just for you. Before contacting a photographer, look carefully at their web site. Ideally, you should find at least a handful of their photographs that make you say “Wow! I’d love to have ones like that.”

Of course, you will probably want to compare prices and conditions too, and these should also be set out clearly on their web site. Finally, look for positive comments from previous clients on Google, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Tell the photographer what you want

When you do get in touch with a photographer, tell them as clearly as you can what it is you want. This will help them to respond with an appropriate offer, and to prepare for the shoot on their side: What kind of ‘look’ are you hoping to achieve? (Think about making a screenshot of a ‘wow’ photo from the photographer’s own website or elsewhere and sending it as a reference.) Who are the photos for? Where will they be displayed?

Choosing the location

Perhaps the most important decision you need to make is the location for the shoot – if you want classic, formal portraits, then the studio may be the best choice. Alternatively, you might prefer less formal ‘environmental’ images, with elements of your home or workplace, or of nature or architecture, in the background.

Your choice of location will to a large extent determine the style of the images. A photographer may be able to create studio-type shots in your home or office (but make absolutely sure that he understands that this is what you want). However, he will not be able to make environmental portraits in the studio.

I sometimes do double ‘studio + environmental’ sessions. We start the shoot in the studio and then move on to a nearby park or city location, enabling me to deliver a mix of both types of portrait.

If you have questions, ask!

Don’t be afraid to ask the photographer before the portrait session if there are things you’re worried about. What clothes should I wear? Will I be able to change in privacy? Is there free parking at the studio?

Basic grooming is essential

Of course you want to look your best in your portrait photos, so don’t forget the basics of personal grooming. Before the session starts, check the corners of your mouth and eyes, and brush your teeth. The photographer should be able to retouch temporary skin blemishes, but it’s much harder to photoshop out fragments of your last meal stuck between your teeth!

By all means get your hair done before the shoot. But try to avoid arriving for the session directly from the hairdresser – if you do, your clothes are likely to be covered with hundreds of freshly-snipped fragments of hair.

Arrive on time

This sounds obvious, but remember that the photographer has booked a specific timeslot for your portrait session in his diary, and may have another session immediately afterwards. So if you turn up 20 minutes late, it’s quite likely that your shoot will be shorter than you had hoped.

You’re the model. I’m the photographer.

The final piece of advice is to remember that you and the photographer both have important roles to play in making your portrait session a success, and that these roles are different.

The photographer can help you to pose, but he cannot do it for you – you need to be willing to play along with his suggestions, and to reveal yourself to his camera. Conversely, if you have chosen a photographer whose work you like and admire, then don’t try to tell him how to do his job, but let him exercise his technical and creative skills on your behalf.

Putting the portrait subject in context

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A successful portrait must concentrate the viewer’s attention on the subject’s face, of course. But it can also provide additional information about their profession, passions or interests.

There are plenty of different ways to provide this context. Many people wear uniforms or other special clothing in the course of their work, or to practice their favourite sport.

I’ve photographed artists with their works, musicians with their instruments, and one time a chef with a huge kitchen knife.

Of course, many of us don’t have distinctive clothing or equipment. In this case, the contextual elements of a portrait need to be symbolic or suggestive. Living in Brussels, I’m often asked to make portraits for people who work in the EU institutions. Here, we can integrate obvious symbols such as logos or flags, or go for a more impressionistic backdrop of the ‘European district’.

Perhaps you’d prefer a set of studio portraits with neutral backgrounds. That’s great! I promise we’ll make some beautiful ones. But if you’d like to add a bit of contextual richness, give me a call and we can discuss how we might do this. You like reading? We can make some shots of you with a book. Your job involves environmental protection? Let’s do the shoot in the woods. You’re a tech entrepreneur? I recommend a modern architectural background. Into music? Why not make some portraits with your earphones or the cover of your favourite album? Movie buff? Brussels has some amazing retro cinema architecture we can use.

Are you photogenic?

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At least half of all the clients who come to me for portrait sessions introduce themselves by saying something like “I always hate myself in photos”, or “I’m sorry, but I’m just not photogenic”, or “I’ve never seen a portrait of myself that I like”.

This includes men and women that most people would find good-looking, or even gorgeous. Gently, I try to explore their feelings. If a client is worried about wrinkles, about circles under their eyes, or about a spot that just appeared that morning, knowing this gives me some guidance about the retouching that may be necessary in post-production, and I explain what I can and cannot do. It can also help me make appropriate choices with regard to shooting angles and lighting.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall

Frequently, however, a client will confess self-consciousness about a very specific feature of their face. Over the years, I’ve come to realise that this kind of anxiety usually has to do with a perceived lack of facial symmetry. “This is my good side”, people say, as if it was an incontrovertible and obvious fact, although it’s generally impossible to see why and they are rarely able to explain. I recently made portraits of a really beautiful young woman who was convinced that one of her eyes was smaller than the other, and found it hard to believe that I could not guess which one it was.

Few of us – perhaps none of us – have perfectly symmetrical faces. But because we see them in mirrors several times every day they are deeply familiar to us, and in the mirror they look normal. Now when someone sees their face in a photograph, the small asymmetries to which they have become accustomed in the mirror are not simply neutralised, they are reversed. In other words, to the person themselves they seem twice as large as they do to everyone else. I believe this may be the source of many people’s anxieties about their appearance.

I find all human beings fascinating and beautiful. I have always loved looking at people’s faces. As a portrait photographer, it’s my job to reveal each subject’s beauty. But I can do this most easily when they are confident and relaxed. Acknowledging and understanding their anxieties about their appearance, and convincing them that I love the way they look, is the basis of a successful portrait session.