Professional Portrait Photography

Course Overview

Designed for those with no formal photographic training but who need to take professional quality portrait photographs as part of their job. This course covers understanding your digital camera, structuring your shoot, professional lighting techniques, composing your shots and ways to digitally enhance your images for both print and web publishing.

This course is designed to radically improve the quality of your images.
Course content

Introduction

Digital capture
· Getting the best from your camera
· Understanding file formats
· When to use different ISO settings
· f-stops: shutter speeds explained
· Understanding colour temperature
· Setting the white balance

Lighting techniques
· Direction, form and quality
· Ambient and natural light
· Lighting with flash
· Lighting techniques for portrait photography
· Bracketing your shots
· Primary and secondary reflectors
· Achieving a colour light bounce
· Controlling contrast
Crafting images
· Composition
· Movement
· Colour and black and white

Shoot management
· Interpreting the brief
· Relating to your subject
· Structuring the shoot
· Single portraits vs groups

Basic image manipulation techniques
· Image size and resolution
· Retouching and cropping
· Using levels and curves
· Using hue and saturation
· Creating a contact sheet

Marketing your images
· Ways to publish your contact sheet online
· Presenting your portfolio
· Useful websites

Questions and answers