Portrait Course - Day 1

The portrait photography course I am doing is in Bournemouth and is consequently too far to travel back and forth every day for 3 days. There is a hotel which was recommended where course candidates get a very favourable rate - it is so favourable in fact that I imagined my accommodation would be a sleeping bag in a box under the stairs! To my surprise the hotel is very comfortable, clean and rather quaint. Apart from another course delegate and I, the hotel is full of much older people holidaying in Bournemouth in winter...never knew it was such an attractive option! The hotel is having a Turkey and Tinsel theme this week and my senses were shocked into seeing all the Christmas decorations all over the hotel, Christmas music and Christmas themed food - all to guarantee that I will be weary of Christmas before we reach December.

The course is very good. We had a morning of general theory, then a shoot (of one of the staff members) to demonstrate the different lighting styles, and then after lunch a very useful session of Photoshop skills all relevant to portraits. I learned how to make those 9 image montages and other types of ways of presenting photographs to clients. There are only 3 of us on the course so it is very hands on and we get individual attention when necessary.

This is a photo from the shoot this morning. It was really an exercise to demonstrate the effect of using one light, then two, then three and finally four lights. We had a brief to shoot head and shoulders only and the composition was not really a factor. To be honest I hate photos like this, the 'passport' look, but here the lighting is technically correct with 3 lights, before we added the rim lighting on the hair. Jo, the staff member, was very patient while we practiced the different lighting effects.

Tomorrow we shoot high key shots, some children and couples. More the fun type of pictures I prefer.