Portraiture Class

Yesterday I attended a much-awaited portraiture class organized by my camera club. It was every bit as interesting as I thought it would be. We had a model who did a fabulous job of posing for us, and an instructor who is an accomplished photographer. The instructor, Paul Robinson, belongs to the who's-who in photography in Australia. He was very approachable and kept encouraging us with positive comments as he looked at our shots and helped us to achieve the kind of pictures only pro's would take. Here are some pictures I would like to share: the class in session, teacher and model, a shot of the model that I took. All in, I shot more than 500 photos. This is something you can only do when you have a model, so it was a rare treat indeed to be able to keep shooting at a subject.

It might appear that I have suddenly mastered the art in one class. The truth is, taking portraits requires a lot of practice. Knowing how to set the camera correctly takes but a moment to learn. Setting up the props and lighting is also not difficult. These are all "knowledge" stuff. The "skills" part takes years of practice to hone. Telling the model how to pose so that the picture turns out nice and pleasing is not something that happens by chance. The instructor explained how he positions the hands, tilt the face, etc. Once this is done, all of us in the class just kept shooting to our hearts' content and the pictures all came out nice.