Evolution of a Portrait–Blog Carnival

I have been lucky enough to be part of the same wonderful community of professional photographers for 8 or 9 years.  We are often inundated with questions and requests for help and advice from many up and coming photographers.  While we like to help as much as we can, you can only imagine how busy our lives get between our families and careers, and sometimes we have to say no.  Nobody enjoys that.   So my colleagues and I are sharing some of our most asked questions together for you to follow and bookmark on our blogs.  Collectively, we have tips for everyone; from choosing the right photographer to caring for your portraits at the end of your session along with a bit of insight into what goes into a session.  At the end of this post you can click through to the next blog and treasure trove of information, and then click to the next…and the next…and…you get the idea.  Hope this is helpful.  Leave us comments and if it goes well, we will do it again in a few months!

I want to show a little about what goes into the making of a portrait.  I consider myself a ‘Lifestyle Photographer” in that I hope to showcase a bit of everyday life and reality in my subjects and their environment.  This differs quite a bit from taking ‘snapshots’ though.  Snapshots have their valuable place in our lives, but I doubt any of us are willing to spend hundreds or  thousands of dollars on mere snapshots.  When I go into a session in a family’s home, I include their home environment and try to capture the flavor of who they are.  I do, however, move furniture, tidy up, make minor clothing adjustments, brush hair, wipe faces etc.  My aim is to deliver a picture of who they are–in a high quality piece of art.

SO.  To illustrate a piece of this, I asked my 9 year old India to help.  After the promise of 2 quarters and 10 chocolate chips, she put on her favorite sweater and ran upstairs and told me she wanted to be photographed in her bedroom, which she reluctantly spent most the morning ‘cleaning.’  The 1st photo is a typical snapshot taken with a high-end mom and pop digital camera (Canon G10)with some minor adjustments dialed in to take the highest-quality possible image and with the flash output turned down.  (I can’t help but to fiddle with even my snapshot camera.)

Behold.  Cute girl!

In all fairness, here is another image taken seconds later with my pro camera, not edited at all in Photoshop.  Ooooh, we are getting closer to a portrait.

Then the professional in me steps in and I de-clutter her clean room, removing the baby blanket she has folded at the end of her bed, the lip balm on her radiator, the lamp which is seemingly ‘growing’ out of her neck, the stack of books on her bedside table (just in case they interfere later), and the ladybug Pillow Pet at her feet.  I ask her what her 2nd favorite sweater is and then scootch her slightly more toward the window light.

Here is the next photograph in our process.  Still unedited in Photoshop…nearly there.

I am happy with the capture, it shows of her gentleness, her girlie (self-chosen) pose and her sweet genuine smile and sparkly eyes.  She’s in her own clothes, in her own room and she has contributed heartedly to the end result.  With my guidance, this time the focus is on HER, not the flowery blanket or the distracting stripes on her lovely sweater, or the fluff at her feet or the dotty lamp in the background.  The viewers’ eyes are allowed to rest on her face and get a picture of her personality.  It is still not a finished portrait.  I like it, but it isn’t going on my wall or in a photo album like this.  I now take the chosen image into Photoshop and do some standard editing.  Each image I select is individually edited. I have worked hard for many years to streamline this process and to come up with an editing style that is consistent and pleasing to me and worth the expertise my clients pay me for.  Most of my photographs are shown in black and white.  So the final version of this portrait is black and white as well.

Final result:

I hope this was helpful to see!  Next, click on over to the blog of  Washington DC and Virginia Photographer Ruthi David for her article called “It’s REALLY REALLY not the camera!”

You can reference the whole list of contributing photographers and topics here on Samara’s blog.