Lucy And The Lens

Tag: #Portrait

  • Share Your Best Ever Shot: Part 2

    Two weeks ago, I asked you to share your best ever shot. My best ever shot is this image below of Stacey because I remember it as the first shot, I won a photography competition with back in 2016 and I think that stays with you. It was one of my first portrait night at Preston Photographic Society Also. It was shot with my 55-200m Telephoto zoom lens. This image was lit with soft boxes and a reflector.

    Lucy And The Lens: Stacey

    The second image is from Button Photographic. Button Photographic Says: “Here is a shot I took when I went camping last September, we spent a few hours walking in pretty rough rain before getting to the campsite but when we got there and started pitching our tent we were greeted with this gorgeous rainbow.

    It was a lovely surprise considering I expected the weather to be atrocious the whole time and I was overjoyed to get a shot of it.

    I shot it on my Nikon D3300 with my Sigma 10-20mm lens.

    I can’t really decide whether this is my “best shot” but it’s up there for sure!”

    Button Photographic: Rainbow

    The third image here is from Simon Garner Photography. Simon Garner Says: “I really love the shot, and it was one of my first dance shoots. It Taken with Nikon D3x, 50mm lens, two soft box flashes. Taken as part of a dance shoot.”

    Simon Garner Photography: Dancer Upside Down On Chair

    If you enjoyed this post and want to share your best ever shot with me please email lucy@lucyandthelens.com or share on my facebook page www.facebook.com/lucyandthelensphotography.

  • Portrait Nights At PPS

    I think the first step to learn things you didn’t already know about photography is to join a society to meet other photographers like mine. It’s my fifth year at Preston Photographic society and I’d like to talk about one of the aspects of the society that I really enjoy which is the Portrait Nights.

    Originally you had to sign up to this and the coordinator booked a model for the evenings which is hosted once a month and invited 5 or 6 people on the list to join him or her on a rota system. Now you buy the £10 ticket in advance which is a system I much prefer, and these are allocated on a first come first served basis.

    Each evening starts with setting up the studio lights in a makeshift studio setting. Initially on the portrait nights I used them mostly to learn about how to light a subject as this wasn’t something, I knew much about until I started going to these evenings. In a later post I will discuss my tips on this. Since then I’ve done a master’s in photography, set up as a Freelance photographer and spent hours on end in the studio by myself with models and my own lighting set-ups.

    So, for me a lot has changed from my early natural light only portraits up until now with my studio and location work, but I think today could be very different if I didn’t step into these portrait nights.

    Portrait nights for me now are about meeting and interacting with brand new models that I haven’t previously encountered. Yes, I do have repeat work with models, but I feel that working with new models gives you challenges because its like starting all over again. What I mean by this is that every person reacts differently to the camera.

    I’ve been to early nights where the host did a 10 minute masterclass on shooting models and then we all shoot the models by ourselves in 10 minute slots in there first and second outfits, with our own ideas of poses and directions, based on what you want to get out of the shoot. Then the final setup was to create headshots in short 3-5-minute slots.

    Now instead of a master class you take your portraits where if needed you can have input from the other more experienced photographers than you, and the host.  I think this is great because I believe that you learn by doing sometimes rather than watching.

    I then go home and spend time editing my images in lightroom and some of these have gone fantastically in the internal portrait competitions that we have at Preston photographic society. Try and guess which images below are from my first ever portrait evening and which ones are from the newer ones and you should see a difference in the images. If you enjoy this post, please comment below.