I had the pleasure of photographing this beautiful model named Paris while I was in Texas teaching for a week at the event called Texas School. (If you’d like to attend, here’s the link.) I was teaching lighting at this photographic workshop, and had photographed Paris a few years before, and contacted her to come be my model again. I’m grateful that she did, and we got some beautiful images.
The first part of my teaching was to demonstrate how to shoot with perfect exposures and color balance. Then when you’ve conquered that, you can focus predominantly on expression by connecting with your subject. The goal is to get captivating and real expressions, and as you can see from these thumbnails of un-retouched images, everything looks great. The hard part after a shoot like is is having to decide which images are the absolute best, and I do that by seeing what speaks to me. Those photographs become my top favorites.
From those top images, I picked some to retouch in front of the photographic group, showing them what I do to each image while also showing how little retouching is actually necessary when images are perfectly lit with superb auxiliary lighting.
Starting on a fashion gray background, we have a beautiful set of images of Paris. She looks beautiful, her eyes and expressions glow. We nailed getting the captivating portrait in the first few minutes.
These first few images took about 5 minutes. From there I let other photographers practice shooting her, while I moved on to other models and teaching. Later I circled back for another 5 minutes with Paris, and we did these of her on this gorgeous blue background which really makes her eyes pop. Again, all of these look great.
Then one last time before we ended, I did one more quick 5 minute shoot with her, this time with a change up of lighting styles and while demoing a brand new camera that just came out. So in all, I only photographed her for about 15 minutes total, but we got all of these amazing images of her – all great, all captivating, all beautifully lit.
I was demoing the new Nikon Z7 from the Arlington Camera trade show, and was amazed at the sharpness and resolution. Look how much resolution there is on this portrait above when I zoom in close to her eye or necklace. It’s crazy sharp!
Knowing that we had great images from earlier, we began to play with motion – having her play with her hair, turning, and incorporating some movement and chaos. I really love how these turned out.
And to end the shoot, we did a quick portrait together under the beauty dish light setup with me holding the camera with one hand.
This was a really fun shoot and I’m grateful that Paris could make it. It’s always great to see her and she’s a joy to photograph.
And if you’re a photographer looking for more training like this, join my email list to get 5 free training videos sent to you.
And if you’re looking for an in-person workshop, I’ve got a couple big ones this year. Check out my upcoming schedule of where I’ll be.
And until next time, America.