Portrait photography - the three pleases

On the weekend I photographed a twelve year old girl. Superficially she was a child but the looming clouds of adolescence weren't that far off so what to photograph?

Her mother preferred her as a child to an adolescent so the following photo was perfect for her.

The child wanted to be dark and mysterious so loved the following images:

I, on the other hand, am really interested in photographing what she will become when her features mature so I preferred the following photos:

So when photographing, always remember the three pleases - please the client (the one who buys your images), please the sitter and please yourself and all will be happy!

Should a photographer refuse Indian weddings when they aren’t in a maharajah's palace in Rajasthan?

I was asked to photograph an Indian wedding that was organised very quickly, within a week; an auspicious day not to be missed meant very little planning so when I drove to the venue in Sydney on the wedding day, I had no idea of what to expect though I doubted it would be a magnificent maharajah's palace since there aren’t any in Sydney's suburbs!

The venue turned out to be a brick house. At this point I could have jumped up and down, outraged that the venue wasn’t even a temple but rather than take on reality and lose, I did what all professional photographers do and looked around for opportunities.

Where to photograph the bride? The house’s front door had a glass decorative panel and since the house faced North East, I was able to take advantage of the morning sun streaming through the door’s glass panel. The location wasn’t ideal – a light switch threatened to feature prominently in any photo, the glass panel was at chest height meaning anyone wanting to take advantage of the ideal 45 degree light would have to ask the portrait sitter to crouch down and even worse, it was the front door which meant I couldn’t have an elaborate set up or the guests wouldn’t have been able to enter the house. So what to do?

Here is a “location shot” to give you some idea of what I was faced with.



Below is the final photo, taken within 5 minutes of this location photo – no flash has been used, both sides of the bride's face are illuminated because I took advantage of the lighting reflecting off the walls and most importantly and the bride is not apprehensive or impatient because I worked quickly. I showed the bride the photo immediately afterwards and from then on, any doubt the bride might have had about whether I was able to photograph her at her best disappeared.




The wedding ceremony was housed in a mini tent that was within a marquee in the back yard- it would be safe to say that the natural light was dismal, no beautiful 45 Degree light, just dull light struggling to get though two layers of canvas.

Here is the location shot of what I was faced with:



The location shot is slightly misleading because the mini tent is illuminated since I had placed a flash in the mini tent’s ceiling that fired upwards into its ceiling via remote control (no messy wires tripping up the guests). This turned the humble mini tent into a Bollywood film set. Having the flash fire into the ceiling also meant the wedding couple weren’t being blinded by direct flash. It also meant that I could move around and photograph the couple from various angles knowing that the front of their faces would always be exposed.

Below are some examples :








I wanted to take photos of the couple from the side. Since the bride was sitting in a chair next to the groom, I was faced with deciding who was going to be blurred, the bride or the groom. But rather than make such a decision, I photographed firstly the groom, then the bride and when I got home, I merged the two images to get the couple both beautifully sharp.

Here is the before photo of the bride that was used to make the final image.


Here is the final image showing both bride and groom in perfect focus:




I also took candid shots of the guests. In my experience men are far more difficult than women to photograph so the secret is not to let them know you are photographing them which means no poses and no flash: here are two candid images:






After the wedding ceremony, I took advantage of the lighting set up to photograph the family in the mini tent:




But how to cope when the couple left the mini tent to mingle with their guests in the marquee? I abandoned the flash and took candid photos making sure that the white canvas walls of the marquee did not confuse my camera’s exposure. Then, when I got home, I brought out the magic of the images but altering their exposure and tonality.

Here is a before and after photo of the couple greeting a guest where I have deliberately ‘blown out’ the scuffed walls of the marquee and its plastic window so nothing detracts from the warmth of the greeting.






I then took photos in the house. The living room had a lovely plain white wall and white ceiling so I asked one guest to point the flash at the side wall whilst fired my on-camera flash into the ceiling. This enlarged the apparent light source to give a lovely soft feel to the portraits since the light wraps around the face using this lighting technique. In short, I turned a living room of a suburban house into a professional light studio within two minutes. Here is one image from this 'studio':





In conclusion, I was able to take great photos because I never tried to fight reality. I accepted the location for what it was, a house in suburbia, and then worked out how to best capture the wedding day. To see more photos from the day, click on the link: http://www.johnslaytor.com.au/slideshows/celebrations/hindu_wedding_sydney/index.html

Party Clicks

A depressing venue - a dingy nightclub so I was concerned about how to photograph the event, a 21st birthday for a Nigerian born Australian, CJ. I didn't want a 'society' pages look to the images where the women pout at the camera, toes stretched, plastic smiles. Nor did I want the usual dim background caused by the flash having to work overtime in the darkness.


A concern about my personal safety. The email that got me the gig simply stated "a friend told me about you" and CJ wouldn't confirm who the friend was. I was supposed to turn up to the venue at 10pm and leave at 2am but CJ kept changing his mind about when he would appear. First it was 11pm, then midnight. And CJ said when he did turn up, I was supposed to meet him outside. I sent CJ an invoice and my bank details for the deposit in order to see how genuine he was. Giving my bank account details to a Nigerian seemed to break all the rules.....


When I turned up, the bouncers at the nightclub confirmed it was reserved for CJ to my relief.  I set up my portable photography studio which consisted of a white background seven feet high by 8 feet wide, one 42" flash umbrella on a light stand and my SB-800 Nikon flash set up for remote flash. The studio was located in a corridor on the way to the toilets but in sight of the dance floor: this location was as ideal as it was ever going to get being four feet wide which meant my light-stand and backdrop weren't going to get in the way of passing traffic and the flash umbrella was far enough away from the backdrop to evenly light it.


The studio was a huge hit, particularly with the women, who had arrived en masse way before the men because it gave them something to do whilst waiting and it was novel - no one had ever seen such a set up at a party before. So rather than me asking permission, the women asked if they could be photographed and I was happy because I had controlled the lighting and backdrop so I I knew the photos would be great. Before long, the men arrived, studied what I was doing and liked what they saw.

More of these images can be seen at http://www.johnslaytor.com.au/img/flashcj/index.html




Had I known what a terrific ice breaker the photography studio was, I would have brought another flash umbrella and also figured out a way to pre light the subjects because as it was, the venue was almost too dark so my camera struggled with auto-focussing; the subjects' clothing and skin colour didn't help.