Summary

Daniella, a photographer, recounts her journey from a disastrous photo shoot three years prior to a successful one, where she overcame the paralysis of too much information and created a method allowing her to take natural, spontaneous, and consistent photos.

Abstract

Daniella, after facing a setback in a previous photo shoot that led to a friend's silence, describes her path to redemption. Three years later, she embraces the opportunity to prove her photography skills. With a newfound understanding of photography, she rejects the overwhelming rules she once followed and instead relies on her experience and a self-developed method. This approach enables her to capture authentic and visually appealing images without the constraints of conventional photography advice. The success of her recent photoshoot, evidenced by the quality of the photos before retouching, is a testament to her growth and the effectiveness of her personalized technique.

Opinions

Daniella believes that her initial failure was due to being overwhelmed by too many photography rules and online advice.
She values the importance of lighting in a photoshoot, recognizing its potential to create different styles and atmospheres.
Daniella has come to realize that experience and a personal step-by-step method are more valuable than adhering to a multitude of photography rules.
She feels a sense of pride and accomplishment in her ability to produce images that are natural, spontaneous, and visually consistent.
Daniella appreciates having a subject who is open to her ideas and collaborative in the creative process.
She is grateful for the support of her audience and encourages engagement with her content through claps, comments, and follows.

The worst photo shoot of my life : A story

I’m Daniella, after my totally failed portrait session, I sent the retouched photos to my friend, and she didn’t answer me anymore. (Probably because she didn’t like my photos)

Except that, 3 years later, she contacted me again.

In her message, she told me that she had free time again and that she really wanted to do a photoshoot with me again.

I was FINALLY going to be able to take my revenge!

On myself eh, not on her!

I wanted to prove her that I knew how to take good photos!. That I was a good photographer!

I wanted her to leave with photos that she was going to like, that she was going to post on Instagram, and, why not, put them squarely in a profile picture!. It would be a great pride for me!!

First, I chose my place for this new session. It was in a fairly basic apartment, but in 3 years, I had learned to spot if a place had potential just thanks to its light sources, even if they seemed “ugly” at first glance.

To say it in other words, we could exploit a lot of different lighting situations, and therefore , create a lot of different styles: cinema, vintage or even hyper bright depending on where I was going to be place and how I was going to set my camera.

I remember that, during our disaster photoshoot 3 years ago, I had felt completely blocked.

Blocked to create freely, blocked to ask her for stuff, and even sometimes, blocked to think. And one of the reasons for this blockage is that I was swimming in an “overflow” of information.

With all the YouTube videos I had seen, I no longer knew whether to follow the rule of thirds, respect the theory of colors, or even which lens to use so as not to distort his face.

All these rules that I had heard everywhere were driving me crazy! And I would end up completely paralyzed.

You can imagine that in 3 years, I have had the time to question all these rules and draw my own conclusions about all these.

Using my new understanding of photography, I was able to create photos, without imposing on myself all these constraints that I had seen everywhere on the internet.

In short, I could create by being totally FREE!!.

When I got home, when I put the photos on the computer, I remember what I said to myself :

“Damn, I’m proud of myself! And I think she will like it too!”

The images were natural, and spontaneous. I had managed, I think, to highlight her physique, while telling something authentic!

I just had to reveal the potential of my images in 5 minutes to retouch. And as my job at the shooting had been well done, my photos were visually consistent, even BEFORE the retouching!

I was overjoyed!!

What is the difference between this photo outing and the one we did 3 years ago?

My experience. I had done hundreds of photo outings and I had probably retouched tens of thousands of images. And from this experience, I had created, over the years, a step-by-step method.

I followed this method, step by step, to be SURE to return home with good photos in all circumstances without bothering me with 25 rules to respect.

It worked in all human-related fields: in marriage, in street photography, in family portraits or with models, it didn’t matter. I could express my creativity every time because I was no longer paralyzed by all the “we must do it this way” that I had heard on the internet.

For this session, I had therefore just applied this method! Nothing more.

I was too happy to have found a person who agrees to pose for me and with whom I can freely discuss my ideas.

Thanks for reading

I’m always grateful for your support, if you like this article, please give it claps, highlight the parts you like, comment and follow to not miss the next ones. you are welcome to subscribe to my free email lists.