First Photo Shoot: 12 Lessons Learned

As some of you may know, I recently finished shooting my first official photo shoot, and more specifically, my first engagement shoot (a teaser for this shoot can be seen in the previous post). Christa and Julian, the affianced pair, are close friends of mine. I will post photos as well as more background about the shoot and the models later. Today, I wanted to post a few lessons I learned from this experience that I plan to apply to my next shoot. These lessons come from mistakes I typically make. Some of these may apply to you and your subjects while others may not. But feel free to borrow any of my lessons if they do apply!

1) Shooting in RAW was extremely helpful as I was able to focus more on composition and inspiration. However, I must remember not to completely ignore Aperture, ISO and Shutter Speed…and not be crippled by them either.

2) Planning photos beforehand worked very well. Even though I only shot 70% of my planned photos, preplanning kept me organized and freed me to veer off the beaten path without worrying about forgetting crucial shots.

3) Remember to pay attention to details that may be out of place (bra straps/lines, underwear, hand placement, wrinkles, hair strands out of place, etc).

4) DO NOT GET DISTRACTED BY BACKGROUNDS and forget to pose and, more importantly, to light your subjects.

5) In hot weather, NEVER shoot at a beach unless it is during sunrise or sunset. The weather left us with no choice but to shoot at high noon and, although it worked out, it was absolutely grueling!

6) Begin with standard portraits (and close-ups) and save purposefully blurred and faraway shots for later. The model’s makeup, clothes and hair tend to become less “picture perfect” as the day goes on.

7) Don’t be afraid to re-compose a background.

8) In engagement shots, in order to get an authentic moment from the couple, sometimes getting the man to tell the woman how he feels about her often works better than vice versa. This is because most men tend to be “touch oriented” and often romantically caress the woman while he is speaking to her. Many (certainly not all!) women tend to visibly swoon before the camera when this happens.

9) Sometimes it works well to pose one model and let the other think you forgot about them so that they naturally respond to the posed model. This sometimes creates a more authentic appearing moment.

10) It sometimes works well to give the male a task or “something to do” while shooting.

11) Be aware of where the sun is at ALL times!

12) When torn between working with minimal light or a higher ISO, in post-shoot editing it was easier for me to correct for a high ISO than not enough light.

I am happy to have learned and grown from this experience…and from my mistakes! I hope you find this helpful. Feel free to post your own most common mistakes and significant lessons learned.

- S. Christine