39 Second Portrait Session

During my visit to Australia, a close friend of mine asked me if I would take some photos of her daughter working down at a nearby horse riding farm. Naturally I said yes.

When I arrived, I was introduced to the owner of the place, Jim. Jim is a great bloke and a real Aussie character. I knew within seconds of meeting him that I wanted to try and get a good portrait of him.

Cold call portraits are tough for a number of reasons:

1. You have to convince a total stranger in a very short time that hey they should let you take their photograph.

2.  You have very little time to actually connect with your subject and get something

Needless to say, you need a strategy. Here’s mine:

1. Know before hand where you are going to photograph your subject.

2. Know before hand what it is about your subject that interests you

3. Ask your subject if you can take a portrait, but also push it a bit (more on that in a moment)

4. Provide some direction to your subject

5. Keep the talk going as you want to connect with your subject and get him / her as relaxed as possible

6. Keep it short and know when you have what it is you are after

That’s the strategy. Here is how it broke down with my 39-second portrait session of Jim.

1. Before I asked Jim if I could take some portraits, I picked a spot for the shoot. I was after good even light and a relatively clutter free background. I did an exposure check and took a test shot. I knew that the darker background would provide good contrast separation, especially for a black and white photo.

2. Two things interested me about Jim – his eyes and his working farm man type of look. This is what I wanted to capture.

3. I approached Jim asking for a portrait. Jim was erring on the side of saying ‘no’, and I could feel the opportunity slipping away, so I said ‘Jim just walk over here, rest your arm on this gate. This will be over before you know it. And hey, it isn’t every day you have a photographer offering to take your portrait’.

By this stage Jim was walking over. I had his permission, but only just. This is what I mean about pushing it. You need to ask, but you can also help lead them to saying ‘yes’. Remember, it is easier to say ‘no’, than ‘yes’, so you have to help them get to ‘yes’.

4. Jim was uncomfortable in front of the camera. He was looking all over the place and his body language was telling it’s own story. I provided some direction, asking Jim to place his right hand in his pocket and to look at the camera directly.

5. I kept the conversation going, reassuring Jim about how good his pose looked. I asked him once more to look directly at me and it was during the next couple of shots that I got the portrait I was after. I actually stopped shooting, saying ‘just one moment while I check the exposure (I’m really checking the content)’. I knew as soon as I viewed it that I had what I wanted.

6. In the past I use to shoot more, but I have learnt from my edits that with cold call portraits it is nearly always the first few frames that have the winners. As such, when I knew I had the shot, I let Jim go, thanking him for his time. Always be polite. It is a privilege to have a total stranger let you take their photo.

39-seconds isn’t long. That was the actual shoot time from first frame to last frame.

—–