What to practice on your own next
Okay. Last lesson was crop and exposure fixes, and where I stop, so at this point you've got a workflow. You know how to set up a spot fast, work a pose sequence, shoot more than you think you need, cull it down, and clean up the keeper. That's the whole course, basically, in five steps.
So now what do you do with it.
This is the lesson where I tell you to practice on people who did not sign up for this class, and I mean that in the nicest way possible.
Start with someone who won't get weird about it
Your first practice subject should be someone you already have an easy relationship with. A spouse, a kid, a sibling, a patient friend. Not a stranger, and not, if you can help it, the family member who's most self-conscious in front of a camera. You're not testing them. You're testing yourself, and you want a subject who'll give you some grace while you fumble through it.
Here's the thing nobody tells you about practicing on people you know: they get bored fast, and a bored subject reads as bored in every single frame. I learned this the one time I talked my oldest, Jace, into modeling for a lighting demo. He agreed to it exactly once. Spent the whole time asking if we were done yet, and I got maybe four usable frames out of probably sixty. His face in most of them says "why am I here," because that's exactly what he was thinking. So when you're practicing, keep sessions short. Fifteen, twenty minutes. Better to end while they're still willing than to grind it out and end up with a memory card full of "please let this be over."
Give yourself an actual assignment each time
Don't just go take pictures. Pick one thing to work on per session, so you're not trying to fix everything at once.
- One session, work only on window light. Move your subject around a single window and shoot the same pose at three or four different angles to the light. Compare them side by side afterward.
- Another session, work only on backgrounds. Set a person in front of something plain, then in front of something busy, and practice checking your edges before you check their face. That's the habit I want to be automatic by now.
- Another session, work only on the pose sequence itself. Run through it start to finish without stopping to fix anything, just to build speed and get it in your hands.
You'll get more out of four focused fifteen-minute sessions than one long unfocused hour where you're trying to think about lighting, background, and posing all at the same time. At the end of the day you can only really improve one thing at a time, so.
Let the posed shot fail on purpose sometimes
Practice the moment between poses too, not just the pose. This is where the real shot usually lives.
I photographed a girl named Kaylee years ago for a school project, and she point blank refused to smile because she had braces and hated how they looked in pictures. I posed her every which way and got nothing I could use. So I stopped directing and just kept talking to her, asking her dumb questions, and eventually she laughed at something my son William said off camera, completely unposed, completely real. That was the shot they used for the project. Nobody even asked about the other forty frames.
So when you're practicing at home, build in a stretch where you stop posing and just talk to your subject. Ask about their day. Bring up something ridiculous. Keep shooting the whole time, even though it feels like you're not "really" shooting yet. That gap between poses is where people stop performing for the camera and start looking like themselves.
A word on gear, since I know you're thinking about it
My opinion, and I'll die on this hill: you do not need a new lens right now. You need reps. Everybody wants the expensive glass for the blurry background before they've even nailed focus and exposure with what they've got. Get comfortable with your current setup first. A kit lens in good light, handled well, will out-shoot an expensive lens handled by someone who hasn't practiced yet. Save your money. You can always upgrade later once you actually know what a new lens would fix for you.
A real caution
If you're practicing outside, especially up the canyon or anywhere with uneven ground, watch where you're walking while you're looking through the viewfinder. I have nearly gone down more than once backing up for a wider shot without checking behind me. Also, if you're using a reflector to bounce light onto someone's face, watch the angle before you commit — I blinded a subject once with one aimed wrong, and she's squinting in every frame like she's staring into headlights. Reflectors deserve a little respect and a test shot before you use them on someone's actual portrait.
Before next time
Pick one person and one skill from this lesson, and just go do a short session this week. Don't wait until you feel ready, because that day doesn't really come. You get ready by doing it.