I've been thinking that one way to sell portraiture would be "Portrait Parties". Get a group of friends together, and by using the same setup on all of them, and having them help each other rate and choose the keepers, I could photograph four or five people in the time that it normally takes me to do a full on portrait session. They wouldn't each get quite as much time in front of the camera as one person would in a three or four hour session, but they'd each get some good photos out of it.
I did my first one yesterday. My friend Sharon, had a friend who recently turned 50, and is trying to get into acting and modeling, and needs some photographs for her portfolio. Sharon asked me about photographing her friend, and we decided to try doing the portrait party and get all of the friends in front of the camera. I was there for about five hours, spent about 3 1/2 hours actually shooting, and was totally wrung out by the end of the day. They had dinner reservations, so we had a time limit. We also had a whole lot of fun. When women get together, they have fun in a much more exuberant way than guys do. The fun that they were having really showed through in some of the group photos too. Another thing that I think I did right was in addition to the sexy black dresses, I had them bring some props for some fun and silly photos. It's been my experience that the best photos from a session are usually the ones from our getting a silly idea. Here's the birthday girl: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/5484643997/in/set-72157626039968431/ Here's the whole set. I apologize for not having the energy to pare it down any tighter: http://www.flickriver.com/photos/ellarsee/sets/72157626039968431/ if you prefer the plain flickr interface: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/sets/72157626039968431/ Comments and suggestions welcome and appreciated. -- Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
