Planning for your portraiture session

I get a lot of clients who have never had their photo taken professionally before and they are quite overwhelmed as far as what to do or where to begin. It hit me today that it would prove quite useful to put together a nice guide that can work as a sort of worksheet to go through in preparation for your session. Remember, I believe in total cooperation between myself and my clients and believe that in order to create photos that you will treasure for lifetimes, we have to approach this as a team.

1. Purpose

The first thing that you should do when preparing for your portrait session is determine what you’re doing it for and what you want to convey. Try answering these questions (for some of these questions, you might need outside opinions!):

  1. Why are you booking a portraiture session?
    As a gift? To celebrate your engagement? Because you haven’t had your photos taken in a while? You need professional head shots? Facebook profile photos? It can be as mundane or exciting as a reason as you need it to be, but what is the reason you decided to get your photos taken?
  2. What emotions would you like to capture (in each person involved)?
    This is likely to be tied directly to item one. Every person in the group (or just the single person if just one) needs to determine the emotions and / or personality traits they want to convey. Do you need to convey an air of professionalism? If you’re doing boudoir, do you want to appear vulnerable or smoldering? If they’re just normal profile photo type pictures you’re looking for — what emotions / personality traits do you want to come across in the photos? Enlist your friends to come up with five personality traits of yours. This is the mood that we will try to create in your photos.
  3. What are important dynamics between everyone involved that are important to capture?
    For groups of two or more, find at least five defining characteristics of all the relationships. If you’re doing a couple session, look for some adjectives that describe the way you feel about each other. If you’re doing a family session, look for adjectives that describe the relationship between husband and wife, mother and son, etc. etc. This further defines the mood that we’re trying to capture in your photos, and will help me come up with staging advice to get that idea across ahead of time.
  4. What are some faces / behaviors common to each individual and between individuals that those who know you best would consider uniquely you?
    Personally, this is one I’d definitely have to enlist the help of others with. Are there any facial expressions you make all the time that close friends would recognize? Those are the ones we need to try to pull out (naturally of course, I don’t want you to try to fake it!). If your close friends can help explain when those faces occur, all the better. :) Furthermore, if there are any odd or unique mannerisms between you and whoever else is in the photo session with you, be sure to write it down. For instance, Kristi & Jeremy have a habit where Jeremy bites Kristi’s nose. We stumbled upon that by accident, but those photos show a facet of their relationship that is unique to them. These are the types of things we’ll want to draw out.

2. Inspiration

Once you’ve answered all of the above questions, start looking for photos of your session type (i.e. if you are doing an engagement session, look for engagement photos, a senior portrait session, look for senior photos, etc.). Pull out images that you like and analyze them. What do you like about them? Check out these areas:

  • Processing
    Look at the colors of the photo, the types of “effects” that seem to have been added, etc.
  • Location
    What do you like about the location and background?
  • Emotion
    What emotions are being conveyed that resonate with you? How are they conveyed?
  • Clothing
    What do you notice about the clothing? What in particular jumps out at you? Do you see anything you would like to mimic? What works and what doesn’t?
  • Use of Props
    What props do you see used that seem relevant and not distracting? In what ways are they used?
  • Staging
    How are the subjects staged and positioned that you like? Look at small details — hands, stance, posture, facial expression, etc.

3. Location

Armed with knowledge of what you want your photos to turn out like, and with examples of it, now it’s time to tackle your choice of location for the shoot.

  • What locations have significant meaning to you?
    Pretty self-explanatory.
  • What locations would help to convey the ideas and emotions you listed in step one? Why and how?
    Use your observations from the inspiration step to help you with this. Playgrounds imply fun. Waterfronts romance, etc. Consider the types of things you liked about the backgrounds in the photos you chose as inspiration. Did you like them because they were colorful? Minimalist? Then try to find a location that fits the bill.

4. Props

Props can be tricky. You want to use something that is symbolic and meaningful to you, but something that won’t be distracting. If you’re considering using a prop, consider the following:

  • Does the prop help convey your purpose? Why and how?
  • How can you use these props to convey your purpose?
  • PRACTICE using your props in front of a mirror before the session.

5. Attire

Attire is a common concern for people, but honestly, once you’ve dealt with the above issues, it becomes a little less difficult. Here are some things to consider, but the general rule of thumb is contrast with your environment and cohesion with the subjects.

  • Consider the season.
    Winter: Think clear, contrast and bold colors.
    Spring: Think bright, fresh and lively colors.
    Summer: Think soft, cool, slightly grayed colors.
    Fall: Think deep, dark and muted colors.
  • Consider your location.
    Remember, you want to maintain contrast. If there are a lot of green trees at your location, you don’t want to wear a green of the same tone, etc. You want to match, but all the same, contrast with your environment.
  • Use a color wheel.
    If you need to, use a color wheel to play around with different combinations. Using the seasonal suggestions above as a rule of thumb, tempered by your location choice, select a base color for your outfit on the color scheme designer. Then, play with the types of schemes found in the upper left corner. Schemes I recommend are Mono, Complement, Analogic, Accented Analogic.
  • Don’t forget about textures!
    Textures come across great in black and white and sepia especially. Play with usage of different fabrics to see what you can come up with that’s still comfortable yet visually interesting in ways other than just color and fit. With this in mind, jeans photograph really well. :)
  • Avoid stripes and distracting designs.
    Try not to wear anything with logos or extravagant designs. Stay to solid colors, though plaids are also do-able if they’re similar in tone.

6. Make Up

The final consideration is your make up. In a nutshell, be sure to wear enough foundation to cover any substantial blemishes, but also be sure that your foundations is nicely blended into your neckline. Proper application of foundation saves me a lot of time in post processing! Also, you want to find a happy medium between natural, light normal wear make up and, say theatre make up, but something closer to natural. Just add a little extra accent to make your features pop. Of course, if you’re doing a boudoir session, you might be going for a more dramatic look, so again, this ties into your purpose to some degree.

Conclusion

I really hope that this guide helps. Please feel free to ask any questions on areas I might have missed or things that are not clear. The goal, again, is to create a framework so that we can effectively and efficiently create the photos you dream of and imagine! It does take some effort and thought before hand on your part, however, and I hope this guide helps steer you in the right direction.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 19:12 and is filed under News, Photography and tagged with , , , , , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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