Portrait Photography Tips; The Ideal Home Business
I have people come to me who went to the contract photographer for their High School Senior yearbook portrait and disliked their picture. They want me to take one that they can proudly give out to friends and family. Usually the problem with the pictures I’ve seen is that the photography school graduate “intern” who works for the contract photographer took the photo without paying attention to some minor detail. I get it right and my reputation grows from “fixing” the contract photographer’s mistake.
The techniques for salable body positioning are what you look for in any pose you try whether close-up or full body.
When photographing people full body standing, seated or reclining on the ground, noticing body angle, hands and feet is the way to “fine tune” your portrait and distinguish it from just a “snapshot”.
Lastly, I must share my favorite body positioning tool that makes it so easy to make a better portrait than someone who doesn’t really know what they’re doing: the head tilt.
A woman alone tilts her head just slightly in either direction to make a more stunning portrait. A man’s head can stay straight up or tilt slightly away in the opposite direction from his most forward shoulder but never back towards his most forward shoulder.
Element number Three: Salable Composition
There are many compositional techniques in many books, but it doesn’t take all that knowledge to make portrait compositions that are what the typical consumer considers good enough to call professional.
Once you know what the consumer considers salable, you will be able to reproduce it again and again for other clients. You also will thank me for saving you from thinking that in order to be good enough to sell portrait photography you have to create grand artistic images. You just have to know what works and be able to repeat it for the friends of your clients whom will be getting your business cards by way of referral.
When photographing one individual person, it’s so simple I don’t think you need too much input for that. In fact, I believe you know the naive simplicity with which you thought “hey, I can do this for a living” after taking some portraits of a friend or family member. Yet it truly gets challenging when there is more than one person involved.
I know of a local professional who has referred family portrait clients to me as she specializes in children outdoors. Do you know what that really means? It means she’s intimidated by having to do groupings, but that’s okay, most people are.
So here’s the rule of salable composition:
Keep everybody’s head at a different level.
Like I told you, I didn’t have a fancy College degree so my mentor had to keep it simple enough for me. In some cases, you will recognize that it’s not possible, but if you do your best to stagger head height from individual to individual, you will be creating professional looking images.
You will stand some people, seat some in chairs, seat some on the arms of chairs, seat some on the floor, kneel some, crouch some, lay some down, but you will achieve staggered head heights and salable compositions.
Tip heads inward toward one another for unity when photographing a family group.
Note that men are usually positioned higher than women.
No, I’m not aware of being a chauvinist pig, but I am aware that this is what usually sells. Not the images where mom’s higher than dad but where dad (even if he’s actually shorter!) is positioned just a head or so above mom.
Once you understand the rules, you can bend them where you need to in order to make a portrait work; but people will see that you know what you’re doing as you position them for a good composition and especially when they see your finished work.
My mentor critiqued my work time and time again over several years as I brought images and questions to him. It almost always boiled down to my understanding these most simple aspects that I’ve shared with you.
I know it’s not customary to learn photography on such simplistic terms, but trust me; I’ve had exposure over the years to many different photography educational venues such as classes, workshops, conventions, guest speakers, lectures, teaching videos and books but never have any of the teachers been willing to simply say “look, there are just a few rules to follow and people will be happy with their pictures”. Never have I received more helpful advice than I received from my mentor. This is the reason I’ve written “Professional Photography: Success Without School.” Not because schools have no place in the lives of photographer hopefuls, it’s just that they are not the only way to guarantee success in the business.
I guess if I could sum up the philosophy my mentor embodied in word form I’d say it was rather like this:
“Not everybody wants a masterpiece. Most people just want to remember their loved ones as happy. It’s not hard to capture that with your camera, just don’t stand them in hard sunlight, standing in a straight line facing straight toward the camera.”
About the Author
Tom Ray is a Certified Professional Photographer through the Professional Photographers of America. If you are interested in his full story please go to: www.rayphotography.com/EbookAD.html
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Wow.
This has been the most useful document I have ever read online about making money as a photographer. I think it is important to know that art is nice, but body positioning is what makes money.
Gordon
I hardly ever respond to articles or such. But I must comment on this one. All summed up in a nice little article is a lot of great information here. This is good stuff you dont find in the average tutorial or tip article. This is “real world” advice. Goes to show that what counts is your basic stuff usually overlooked. Thanks, Tracy
All of this information is very thorough and what I really needed today. I was taken aback today when I was delivering a CD of digital images to a friend that I recently shot at a Sparks games so it was a live performance shoot, and she was thrown off by the invoice which was a 3 in 1 form for an estimate, confirmation, or invoice of an assignment. It also had terms and conditions that went along with it. From what I had already studied about the business of photography I had wrote some things on the invoice that was not agreeable with her, so I wanted to come back to the drawing table and rethink what I was actually doing. Because I gave her the Cd of the digital images she thought she was buying the images from me and that she owned the images, but to my understanding the photographer owns whatever work they produce and have to copyright whatever work they produce. I thought that I was doing the right thing by stating in the invoice that she could use the photo for marketing, promotion, internet and personal uses, but she was not comfortable with that and wanted to use them for whatever she wanted, which I have not problem with, but I truly need clarity on how my photos can be used by a client. She said that she never received a form like this before and that she had shot with very famous photographers and they always just hand over the Cd of digital images. But what if she wants to use my images to merchandise herself?? Don’t photographers get paid for merchandised images?? I hope all of this is clear and that I can get some clarity on this subject. I need to know, should I only use a model releases with everyone that I shoot? What about invoices or basic contracts, or agreements??