I’ve been going back and forth with myself for months on this. Countless articles are posted on websites like Petapixel, Fstoppers, and Phoblographer every month regarding the benefits and cons of social media. The information is there, and sometimes it’s quite overwhelming.
Read MoreI'm a failure
“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
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5 Frames With the Mamiya M645 1000s and Mamiya-Sekor C 55mm f/2.8
My dive into medium format film was hard and fast. Less than two months after I started shooting film again, and after buying a Leica M3, I found this beauty of a Mamiya M645 set up on eBay.
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6 Frames with the Canon Rebel G and 50mm f/1.8
The Canon Rebel G is not a sought-after film camera, but it’s what I was gifted for a film photography class I accidentally took in college. It was my moms’, and either well taken care of, or rarely used. It’s rather simple, with one dial to control shutter speed and aperture, a shutter button, a self-timer, different exposure modes ranging from A to M, an ISO mode to change the automatic reading of the film, exposure lock, and TTL center weighted metering.
Read MoreSay cheese!
In the world of portrait photography, getting a genuine smile out of someone is the most sought after moment. Capturing that moment can be incredibly hard, because most of the time, it ends up being forced. Photographers who shoot lifestyle portraits tend to let the scene play out between subjects (families, individuals, etc.), aiming to capture the moments in between direction. On the contrary, fashion photographers that have had years of practice to know how to twist, turn, and tilt their models to look as flattering as possible. Ordinary people typically don’t know how to pose, but they know how to force a smile.
Most of us grew up hearing the phrase “Say cheese!” And most times, all this accomplishes is something between the look of a nut cracker’s painted face, and a child meeting their favorite character at Disney World. It also doesn’t help that most people, if any, don’t actually like having their picture taken. I can’t stand it, so I understand when other people don’t either. When I’m taking pictures, I try and fall in the middle somewhere between lifestyle and fashion photography, certainly leaning towards the more relaxed flow of lifestyle.
Posing is a topic I’ll discuss in length, but on another day. What I’m after, for the most part, is to capture the small details that come with everyone’s own personal smile. My favorite smile is the one that follows a big laugh. Why the laugh occurred in the first place doesn’t matter. Whether it’s from a cracked joke, a failed attempt to look serious, or some other goofy situation developing nearby; all that matters is that for one split second, something made my subject happy enough for their real smile to shine through.
One thing that I’ve found helps tremendously is having my client bringing friends. I’m not talking the entire class of 2019, but two or three close friends that can make the person being photographed smile with just a look. A one on one session is incredibly awkward, so what better to loosen someone up than having their best friends with them?
Something I hope my clientele will come to expect from me is a relaxed, organic session. Having your photo taken doesn’t need to be a stressful, awkward situation. Bring your friends, don’t be afraid to be yourself, and lastly, let’s make this as fun of an experience as possible.