From the course: Portrait Photography: High School Seniors

Understanding the art and business of portraiture

From the course: Portrait Photography: High School Seniors

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Understanding the art and business of portraiture

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- When it comes to senior portraits these days, there's more flexibility, so that means we have more artistic leeway than ever before, which personally I think that's fantastic. What I'm gonna show you in this course is the way that I approach these shoots, because I like a very fluid method for posing. I like to work and build a rapport with my subjects. And I really like to have them feel like they're engaged and having fun doing this. The thing about this is that expression is almost everything when it comes to portraiture. You can have the lighting right and you can have the technical aspects perfect, but if you don't get a good expression out of your subject, then you're not gonna have a successful portrait. So getting the student engaged and having a good time allows us to have this artistic freedom and to really come up with something that they're excited about. Now, this applies to nearly anyone who is taking up this kind of assignment, but if you're thinking about it in terms of business, there's a few things that we want you to know. And we're gonna cover things like making sure that you get an agreement and a shot list and some of those professional things in order. And I think this is important whether it's a next door neighbor or it's someone that you've never meet before, because the good thing about the business side of these assignments is that it gets what's in everyone's head out on a piece of paper where everyone can look at it and then agree upon it. Then that way when you go out for the shoot, I think you can have a lot of confidence that you can be artistic, knowing that all the business things have already been taken care of. So I'm really excited in showing you the way that I like to do this, and I can't wait to get out in the field and start taking pictures.

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