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Hello Linda, There are several ways to receive instruction in portrait photography.
It depends what you are wanting to accomplish.
One person? Two? A family? A group? Outdoor? Indoor? With lights? Without lights? Strobes? Constant light? Just those few I mention ALL have different approaches. If you will allow me to boil this down to two choices; there is technical lighting instruction and posing. Tons of books have been written on both subjects. Next; do you desire to do multiple lighting setups or more simple?
Studio or outdoor? I would recommend going to a good book store and thumbing through the multitude of books on this subject. The problems I see with a DVD instructional video is multi-fold. 1) How do you watch TV and then practice? At least with a book, you can re-read a page...much easier than backing up the video. 2) "Their" way may not be "your" way. You may find yourself learning their "cookie cutter" approach. Something I have great distain for; but that is for another discussion. Something few books or videos will talk about is YOUR relationship with your subjects. Great portrait photogs are good with people....getting them to relax, smile naturally etc...Capturing "The Person" is not as easy as it sounds. I am a strong advocate of learning the nature of light long before learning to pose or set up strobes. The subject of light,it's purpose and use in photography takes more than a lifetime to learn; but that's a good thing. To recap, I would strongly suggest a BASIC book of portrait lighting. Then get a dummy head (not me)LOL to practice with or stuffed animals. Practicing on family and friends will exhaust you and them. LOL
I often see students new to portrait lighting, totally overwhelmed by information overload..too many lights, reflectors, diffusers, scrims, gobos etc... Yikes!..and then discouragement follows quickly. Here's the good news Linda; depending on how much work you put into this, you will be producing fine results in weeks.
It is not a matter of how many lights or how many mega pixels your camera has, it depends on you and some solid foundations in lighting. One more suggestion. When I started in photography a while back (yeesh), I kept a note book with diagrams and descriptions of my setups. It was a great help for years. all the best, Pete
March 17, 2008
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