4 ways to get a studio look without a photo studio

On our Portrait photography course we spend a lot of time explaining about light, how to use daylight rather than needing to invest in some form of studio lighting. Remember how we all thought digital photography was going to be free once you owned a camera? This article via Digital Camera World offers another way to set up a home studio and in general everything here is valid and the advice would help you to be a better studio, portrait or still life photographer.

Few amateur photographers can afford the luxury of a dedicated studio, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t take top-quality images that look like they were taken in a studio. In their latest guest post the team at Photoventure show you  how…

Virgile Simon Bertrand – featured photographer

Virgil Simon Bertrand, I can tell you very little about this photographer as his information is remarkably sketchy, even so he makes good pictures. Here is a link to his web site

How to shoot portraits that tell a story about your subject

From Digital Camera World

Reading through this tutorial on environmental portraiture I wonder if the author had attended our Portrait Photography Course as all of what is said sounds like it came from my mouth, maybe they just agree with me. We are aiming to run our next Portrait Photography Course in November, get in touch for the dates

Discover how to shoot and enhance a portrait that ‘tells the story’ of your subject at work or at play.

Environmental portraits are photos of people in their everyday surroundings, whether at work, home, or play.

The idea is to include things that tell us something about the person, and the background becomes their ‘backstory’, so we need to show details and objects that help to explain who they are and what they do.

Of course, it helps if you’ve got an interesting subject and environment to shoot, and we went to the Bath Aqua Glass glassmaking workshop to photograph talented glassblower Will as he produced one of his beautiful and delicate creations.

We began the shoot by taking some candid shots while observing the glassblowing process.

See the rest of this article here

 

7 Tips for Better Environmental Portraits

Shooting portraits can be one of the most fulfilling and frustrating jobs a photographer can take on.  Furthermore, portraits shot on location, that is to say, not in a studio with a background can be even more complicated based on what the client wants to portray. This tutorial from Light Stalking might be of help

Top Ten Tips for Posing Couples

If you are an aspiring wedding photographer or just like taking pictures of couples this article could be valuable to you, it talks a bit of sense and of course a bit of dogma but is well worth the read. You might also think about our Portrait course which spends time talking about posing and making your subjects feel comfortable so that you get the best images.

Top Ten Tips for Posing | Professional Photography Blog | Pictage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photography Courses for 2014

We have our new schedule for the coming year, we are currently writing a couple of new courses, one on art photography, but these will not be ready for the new term. We have all the usual favourites from Understanding Your Digital SLR Camera, Composition In Photography, Portraiture, Flash, Lightroom, Photoshop,

you can see the full list here

Understanding Your DSLR Camera Evening Class £85 Start Dates: 21.01.2014; 05.03.2014

Understanding Your DSLR Camera Saturday Morning Class £85 Start Date: 9.11.2013; 08.03.2014

1 Day Understanding Your DSLR Camera £95 Dates, 27.10.2013; 26.01.2014; 23.02.2014; 30.03.2014; 27.04.2014

Understanding Your Digital Compact Camera £85 Start Date: 5.03.2014

Intermediate Photography £97 Start Date: 24.02.2014

Flash Photography £85 Start date 29.01.2014

Understanding Lightroom £85 Start Date: 27.02.2014

Introduction to Photoshop and PS Elements £97 Start Date: 18.02.2014

Composition In Photography – Seeing Pictures £85 Start Date: 4.03.2014

Portrait Photography £85 Start Date: 27.01.2014

 

7 Tips for Photographing Kids

Digital Photo School over in Melbourne have many useful tutorials and guides, this one caught my eye as I had recently seen some very poor examples of kids photography. This article is by Darlene Hildebrandt

Notice something about the title of the article? It doesn’t say how to take “portraits” of kids! Kids, especially those five and under, pretty much dictate how the photography session is going to unfold, and it usually involves moving. Fast! Over the years my style has evolved from format portraiture with medium format film camera (which is NOT conducive to movement) to 35mm, and finally to digital. Digital allows much more freedom of motion and with a few tips you should be on your way to some great photos of kids. 

THE SEVEN TIPS :

• have patience
• be ready
• get down to their level
• using natural light or flash
• choose your focus mode carefully
• be a goofball
• let them run the session, don’t try and control it

©Keith Barnes

Read more: http://digital-photography-school.com/7-tips-for-photographing-kids#ixzz2e2Mo7UyI

Easy Ways to Spice Up Your Self-Portraits So They Stand Out

I’m not sure self portraits are ever easy but there are some good tips here and if you feel like doing more than a “selfie” this would be a good place to start looking. The article by Jason Little is a photographer (shooting macros, portraits, candids, and the occasional landscape), part time writer, and full time lover of music. You can see Jason’s photography on his photography blog or on Flickr. is on Lightstalking

Most people, especially when starting out in photography, find self-portraits to be a nerve-wracking venture; and some, to be sure, never really get over the disquieting dread that accompanies having to get in front of the camera when they’re so accustomed to being behind it.

It’s normal, I guess. We could probably engage in a lengthy and ultimately convoluted discussion about self-esteem, body image, and a whole host of other psychological implications related to why some people don’t like looking at themselves, but that’s not going to fix anyone is it? I doubt it. There are plenty of websites you could visit to try and work all that stuff out, but before you go, allow me to run a few ideas by you; ideas that might ease you into making self-portraits or, if you are already making them, some ideas on how to improve them. You never know, it could be the creative spark you need to help you overcome your fear of self-inflicted photographs.….MORE

 

Telepathy by Daniela Vladimirova, on Flickr

 

How to Capture Authentic Emotion in Portrait Photography

We have just completed another successful Portrait Course with some great students and exceptional images. We teach the technical aspects of portrait photography but also the, as important, working with the subject to get the best out of them, we call it ‘posing and all that’. The next course will be in the autumn but if you want some tips before then this article by Jason D. Little on Lightstalking would be useful to you.

If you shoot portraits on a regular basis, I’m sure you have an informal checklist of sorts that you consult — at least mentally — both before and after you click the shutter. You want to make sure the composition is interesting, the desired part of the face is in focus, the lighting is flattering; all important things, to be sure. And on some level, these are easy things. What’s not always so easy is capturing emotion.

When you’re shooting street shots or candids, capturing genuine emotion isn’t too difficult because you’re recording moments as they happen and your subjects are often unaware of or unconcerned with the camera’s presence. But when it comes to actually posing for a portrait session, getting authentic emotion out of your subject can be a tricky course to navigate. Many otherwise easy-going individual tend to tense up once they get in front of the camera while, on the opposite end of the spectrum, others go overboard with exaggerated smiles or all manner of unpredictable and unflattering facial expressions.

It takes a little effort — mostly in the form of simply being a thoughtful photographer — but getting your subjects to display some unfiltered emotion is certainly an attainable goal and one with a huge payoff. The following tips apply whether your portraits are formal or spur of the moment, for pay or for fun.….MORE

 

 

©Tony Haupt  OSP Portrait Course

Click Here: How to Capture Authentic Emotion in Portrait Photography

Why portrait photography is so difficult…

An article in The Guardian reveals an insight into how we, all of us, think about how we look. It is not an article about photography but it does answer why subjects dislike photos of themselves, and surprisingly it has little to do with our skills as photographers. Here are a couple of sections that if you find interesting may tempt you to read the rest.

Psychologist and behavioural scientist Nicholas Epley oversaw a key study into self-enhancement and attractiveness. Rather than have people simply rate their beauty compared with others, he asked them to identify an original photograph of themselves from a lineup including versions that had been morphed to appear more and less attractive. Visual recognition, reads the study, is “an automatic psychological process, occurring rapidly and intuitively with little or no apparent conscious deliberation”. If the subjects quickly chose a falsely flattering image – which most did – they genuinely believed it was really how they looked……..Knowing the results of Epley’s study, it makes sense that many people hate photographs of themselves so viscerally – on one level, they don’t even recognise the person in the picture as themselves.

You can read the rest here