Mum I've been shooting: 专访

I'm not good at working with people. Much less shoot them. It will take quite a while before I reach the strobist standard, but I'm lucky enough to get opportunities to practice.

More after the break...

Feature portraits are very much a bread and butter of photojournalists, and as SYD shooters we do get our fair share of such assignments. These are the assignments that got me thinking way before I actually go on the shoot, and still get stressed up on site.

There is considerably more PR than technicality when it comes to feature portraits. The person knows he is going to be shown to a lot of other people, and will get particularly picky at times. Most important thing I had to overcome is to act confident. Yea... act. They will be more comfortable if they think you are pro... (and they will think twice about asking to see the pic u have taken) Even when the initial pose is crap, just take a few pics and praise him. Dun keep changing posts too often and too quickly.

Then there is the picky PR manager to deal with... those pesky people who's always looking for opportunities to make free adverts. They want you to include crap stuff like their company logo, their medals, their work... all sorts of stuff you know will be irrelevant. Just take a few random shots to pacify them.

There are also those who can't smile (me being one of them). I had to learn how to talk crap with them to make them comply (something i'm still learning), and its considerably harder to convince a grownup than teens/children, us being still young haha.

Another aspect I had to work on would be the relevance, how to link the guy's face to the topic of the article. Usually it would mean posing props in interesting positions, and photogs only have like... 5-10 mins to work on the poses, and we don't have much time to pause and think between poses. I remembered how shaky I was during my first few assignments, when everyone was looking at me as I try to cough out some poses on the spot. Sweat. I'd really like to see how a pro works in the field one day.

One tool I'm learning to use effectively is off camera flashes (aka strobist). Maybe one day, when I own more flashes and maybe some light stands. But right now, I still have to rely on our dear reporters to handhold them for me.