Portraiture tips and tricks were what Julia Cleaver provided to us in her greatly informative talk this week. ‘How I Go About My Work’ provided a great amount of information on all areas of portraiture. Firstly Julia introduced how light can affect a model’s face shape. This included tips on how we could pose and position a model to improve the composition.
Planning the Shoot
One important process we heard, that Julia completes before a shoot, is to pre-visualise some potential moods. We heard that she does this by the use of a mood-board. To build some initial ideas Julia explained that she uses Pinterest. This allows her to start ideas and then she will then use this to tailor her own ideas.
Getting the Setup Right
After you have decided on the look and mood of the shoot the next thing we learnt about was the setup. Julia showed a number of props that she uses to style the models and discussed posing. We learnt there were a number of points around posing depending on the age and if they are male or female. Also how to put models at ease by talking to them, or providing them with a prop or feeding them!
Equipment & Backgrounds
Lastly, Julia went on to tell us about all the different types of flash lighting and accessories that she uses. It was explained to us what all of these were used for and what advantages they provided.
Overall it was a very informative talk where there were many questions and constructive conversations. This provided many portraiture tips and tricks which we can put into practice in our last Practical Evening of the year.
You can find out more about Julia here: www.juliacleaver.com