Life-long Learning

I believe in life-long learning. No one knows everything, and no one is too old to learn, or re-learn, something new.

So yesterday, the morning after our first snow storm, I headed off to Cap Pele to attend a portrait photography workshop with #PaulaLirette. Her portrait work is amazing – and we were all there to pick her brain and improve our skills.

First we discussed the technical aspects of the craft, like decisions about ISO, F-stops, shutter speeds, lighting, fill flash, the use of reflectors, being aware of everything in our view like stray hairs on models, crooked jewellery, etc.

Then we talked about the other aspects of our art. Things like getting to know our subject, what they want from the shoot, how the final images will be used and so forth.

It’s important to develop a rapport with the person/people in front of your camera to bring out their authentic selves and tell their story.

We (obviously) did most of our shooting outside. It was a bright sunny day. Although most people would say “yay” to sunshine, as a photographer, shooting at mid day, it’s not ideal. Get it wrong and shadows on people’s faces can make them look like Hallowe’en ghouls. So, a lot of thought went into finding spots that offered a bit of protection from direct sunlight – like areas of “open shade”.

With family groups, she told us, it’s important to try and capture the connections among family members while showing each person attractively.

Needless to say, we all took several shots of the ‘models’ giving us their time and attention to try and tell a little different story with each image.

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We were all grateful to our models who gave us their time and energy to try out the various techniques that Paula had suggested.

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#PaulaLirette’s Portrait Workshop was most definitely time well spent.

It was a pleasure meeting the other photographers as we all worked together to improve both our technical skills and our artistry.