It’s all about beauty. It’s all about making it a special visual and visceral experience for your subject. You want the subject to love his or her image as you captured it. IF you do that – then the commercial effect takes over immediately, meaning…
First of all, let’s face it, most people are intimidated when being photographed. This is especially true when facing the camera lens of a professional photographer. In a day and age when more photos are taken than ever in history with probably half of them being selfies; and when those images are produced and deleted in a heartbeat based on their appeal or lack thereof, we are very fortunate indeed that people will still seek out a professional photographer.
You know that I don’t like rules when it comes to photography. It is, however, nice to have a place to start (or something to fall back on) – especially if you’re a newcomer to the business because a shoot always carries with it pressure in the moment. So, I will always give you “suggestions” that I believe will make your pictures better or more interesting and give you something to fall back on. Bottom line: Your subjects must like themselves in the pictures or you blew it! These “suggestions” have worked for me for decades (and thousands of other shooters) to help make photographs more appealing (and salable).
Let’s start this out with a bit of history. I am in the process of going through old photo sessions for a variety of new projects. I found these – and in fact, just sent these photographs and the full story to Denny himself. I was bragging on just how long I have been using Denny products ;)! It made both of us laugh (and feel old (no…really, we don’t feel old at all ;))…
We’ve spent a lot of time on the techniques for photographing women…
Let’s talk about sessions for the male of the species…and specifically the needs of actors and models.
Again, these images were made with basic lighting and basic (and inexpensive) photo equipment and my ever-present Denny backgrounds, posing stools and C-Stands.
A pretty young singer had just moved here (to LA) from Philadelphia. So, let’s talk about business for the moment since this tip and all my suggestions (at their highest level) is about transitioning from simply doing snapshots of your friends that are made with cell phones 90% of the time, to making sophisticated marketable images and hopefully making some good money with your camera (or your cell phone for that matter).
