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Save 10% by using code JAN22 till 31st Jan 2022 For some, shooting portrait photography is one of the scariest genres.
Watching this video and overcome that fear!
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00:00 Intro
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Comments
41 responses to “How To Overcome Your Fear Of Creating Portrait Photos”
Hi sir. Can i show you some of my work. Im still very new to photography
Thanks
Great subject and great teaching ! Thanks.
The great YOU!!!! hhahaha. Awesome video bro! <3
Thanks
Not that easy to find models in the east of Scotland. The models on the mentioned sites are not really models, most just thought it might to fun to call themselves 'model'… I know, I have tried to to hire so many, most don't even look their post often for years, let alone reply.
I will continue, but short of moving to major city, it is a struggle.
That’s interesting! Because this is literally my what I enjoy the most! My favorite though is taking photos when the people in the photos know I’m taking pictures but don’t know when! You end up with very “real” looking photos where your actually seeing the person and not just the way they want people to see them. I love the results. You have to be pretty patient though!
Your style of making these short films is just so calming and really inspires confidence in the viewer! Thank you so much for being out there and doing this for us! Best wishes from Munich Germany
Cut down on the caffeine man! 😂📸
I couldn't photograph nudes until I was 70. I could do weddings, bar mitzvahs, corporate events and regular portraits in a studio but, not nudes. Like Imogene Cunningham sad when asked why she didn't produce her world famous nudes until she was in her 60's, "I had to wait for my kids to move out and my husband to die." It does make it easier
Bravoooooo !!!!!
I've been a portrait photographer for several decades. Just a few years ago I go my first request to do a High School Senior photo shoot. It was the first and last I will EVER do. I took around 200 shots, culled through and chose about 25 to show her as proofs. I even edited the proofs. Why? Because I know that young girls of this age can be very self-critical and I hoped to avoid that. She was an attractive girl, very fashionably dressed, hair and makeup professionally done for the shoot. All shots were outdoors in very natural, flattering, soft light, in a trendy, contemporary setting (no cliche' stand by the tree poses). I put a lot of hours and work into it — prep/practice, the shoot, hours of processing. She did not like them — not even ONE. Everyone else who saw them thought they were great. I tried to talk with her to find out what she didn't like, or what was missing that she was looking for. I was going to offer to reshoot if she could tell me what she wanted. She could not tell me. My conclusion was that she had some imagined, illusory, ideal image of herself in her head that nothing I could do would satisfy. I even gave her 50 additional proofs to look at. NO to all of them. I think she had the image of a rock star, or fashion model or actress on the red carpet in her mind. The shots I did were very contemporary, nothing traditional or old school about them! No, I didn't bring along a boom box, but they were trendy and current. I did a lot of studying beforehand to see what was trending for Senior High School shoots. Lesson for me: Senior HS Photo Shoots, NOT MY THING. I deal in reality, not fantasy. Sure, I want to please my portrait clients and I spend hours enhancing and doing everything I can to make them say "WOW, I love the way I look". But this genre is not for me. Huge lesson. For my own mental health, NEVER AGAIN. Not worth the incredible amount of time and stress. (And yes, she HAD seen examples of my work prior to booking me.)
you are amazing . thank you .
I'm a portrait photographer and agree with everything said in this video. Most of the time I show up with one camera and one lens for a portrait shoot, because I don't wanna be distracted by gear and things like that. It's about the human interaction, and excessive amount of gear only make things worse, imo.
Even though I am an introvert I much rather prefer to work with someone new (a stranger), rather than someone from my family. I find extremely hard to photograph my family or close friends. I become friends with people that I meet through photography, but not other way around.
Rule #0 of portrait photography for me is – do not show raw images to the model. Under any circumstances. Camera is for me, model gets to see whatever I decided is good.
Breathtakingly informative.
when possible, it works very well to take a coffe with the people you are going to take the portrait. And if is a different day than the session, is better.
I have done five outdoor portraits shoots, so still very much learning the genre. I totally get what you are saying about the interaction with model. I see that. Get them involved. Show them and compliment them in their work. I think building that working relationship helps a long way getting the results one is after. It’s certainly helped me.
Great!
Great advices as usual. However I must respectfully disagree regarding not photographing people you like. I just started photography a month ago as a new hobby and had 3 portrait shooting sessions exclusively with friends and my gf and it has been a blast. Friends would be more understanding than strangers and you can chat and joke around while shooting to lighten up the mood. They shouldn´t have big expectations of you and just look at it as fun and the chance to come up with great photos for themselves.
I might have been lucky and found my niche cause most photos turned out great but that certainly was not what I had in the back of my mind when we started the shooting. I only did it to explore and have fun. So maybe the trick is to communicate this with your friends beforehand, rather than avoiding it?
Maybe I´d be preaching a different lesson here if the photoshoots didn´t go well and my friends didn´t like their pictures. But I know I´d have been a lot more nervous asking a stranger for a photo on my first time.
Loved it. You could really make some other photography YouTubers quite mad. Your quote was one I put in my book: "You have the ability to see the best in people and show it back to them." Well said. It's about this, not gear.
Seriously, i made only one time portraits (not my liking or kind of photography) on a scheduled zombie walk, a friend of mine and I made some portraits.
"you have the ability to show the best in people" this touches me deeply
Thanks for sharing
Great video.
Watch Peter Coulsons (great Australian Model Photographer) video's from this month, how he talks to a new to be model and turn her from a cramped girl into a loose model in less than 20 minutes. Amazing. (hope you don't mind)
Thanks for sharing.
I love the Ian Curtis pic, hero !
you hit the nail on the head! I was remembering my efforts and strife when taking my sons senior year portraits! I've always taken images of subjects that had no opinion on my skills.
thank you
LOVE portrait photography! Humans are so freaking interesting.
This was so very spot on. Every photographer should watch this.
"You have the ability to see the best in people and show it back to them". That truly is a wonderful point of view.
Thank you for your reassurance. I am pleased with the results from the first formal portraits I have taken. Still, I wondered if the nervousness I felt meant the portrait genre wasn't for me. I will definitely continue, thanks in part to your positive message.
Hello there,
I have been following your content since the very beginning of this channel also I have been doing street, documentary and humanitarian photography for couple of years. As I have been doing this for a fair bit amount of time, I had to engage with multiple other photographers and photography circles also, I thrive to be able to capture more compelling photographs with each shot that I take. Recently, I have been stumbled upon a issue with my photography which is photo selections. As I have been told by other photographers that, I discard better photographs of mine and keep the less compelling photographs as my final products. Which in essence means, I do shoot good photographs but I fail to select them for my final product. I have looked for a solution to this which I have failed to find. With utmost sincerity, I would love if you could address this issue and make a video on this agenda as I believe there are plenty of other photographers who are also suffering from this problem. They have better and much more compelling photograph but fails to recognize them. I video on this issue will help many to find their photographic journey much more enjoyable.
Take Regards,
Oni
Awesome
I want to do it on my channel.🔥🔥🔥
Another refreshing video.
Such a lovely channel. Thank you
Wonderful message. On point. Thank you.
I'm mostly a nature photographer, but I do enjoy doing some portrait photography from time to time as it takes me out of my comfort zone (I'm nearly deaf so I tend to be introverted by nature.) After it's over, there's something extremely satisfying about stepping out of your comfort zone now and then.
I love your approach and the way you communicate. Very inspiring.
"Plans are nothing; planning is everything."- Dwight D. Eisenhower. Its worth some meditating upon. 🙂
Alex..awesome 😎..I fail. on two counts…I have a bottomless end of pixie dust …and as far as a plan of action …I do check to make sure I have at least one memory card
I resonate with this video, as I am sure do many others. Just because I enjoy photography mainly travel and landscapes, my family nominate me to take photos of family groups etc and I get this enormous feeling of stress as do not want them to think I am not good at it. I don’t have any lighting set ups to use and these are just snaps of the family generally outside but sometimes indoors with a flash but feel pressure to act more quickly and when I do some practice shots I feel they are getting impatient. It is probably in my head most of the time but does put me off wanting to try it.