Family portraits are special. I have been booked to take photographs for a wide range of reasons including; to celebrate special occasions such as birthdays or anniversaries or to create an album of special pictures to be given as a gift to parents, grandparents or other relatives. They have all been different, whether it is the location, the setting, the number of people or the style of photography requested. But for each one the following tips applied and ensured that each shoot was a success.

Communication
Make sure you speak to your photographer. It’s no good booking them and then not speaking until the day of the shoot. A good portrait photographer will discuss all of the following points up front with you to ensure a successful shoot.

Decide on a photographic style or ‘feel’ before you get started at the shoot
Have you spoken to everyone attending the shoot? Do they have an opinion of the style of shoot required? Some will want it to be formal and organised; others may want it to be fun and spontaneous. Participants in a group portrait always have an opinion and this often doesn’t become apparent until everyone is in the studio and time is wasted with unnecessary discussions.

Do you need a studio or could you have the shoot at home?
Shooting in a studio can be beneficial, especially for large groups. But it could be possible to shoot at your home. Many portrait photographers, me included, are able to bring a mobile studio to you. This will include a range of backdrops and studio lights and often produces very relaxed looking images. For some people, a photographic studio is an alien and often intimidating and uncomfortable environment.

Make sure the photographer knows how many people are expected to attend and what the age range is
This is really important! The planning required and the space needed to fit, say, 20 people into an image should not be underestimated compared to a shoot of only 3 or 4 people. Knowing the number of people and their age range can help a photographer plan ahead of the shoot and ensure excellent results.

Do all of your shoot attendees know what is expected of them?
Do they all know where to go and at what time? This is critical, as photographers will often have back to back bookings (especially for studio sessions) and you could put everyone under unnecessary pressure if anyone is lost and / or late. How about what they should wear? Having some people in suits or very smart clothes and some in their jeans and jumpers doesn’t always work very well. You will need to ensure you have some level of coordination with your attendees ahead of the shoot date.

Do you have any special considerations?
Family members in wheelchairs for instance, or family members needing special assistance when at the studio? Maybe your older family members will need a chair to sit in for the shoot as they cannot be expected to stand for an hour or more. This should be mentioned so the photographer can incorporate a chair or a sofa for instance into the shoot plan.

Above all, make the most of your session. A family portrait session should be fun and a real social affair. A good portrait photographer will ensure they cover the above with you, but by making sure you follow the above tips you can ensure you get the best possible images. In addition, by being organised you will find that once the initial group shots are over you have spare time. Make the most of your photographer and have them take pictures of smaller groups or individuals. You have booked the photographer normally for an hour so make use of that time.

For me, art is all about expression, freedom to create, and in many ways it’s the embodiment of chaos; you may start out with an idea of what you want to create, but something might happen along the way to change the final outcome.  With photography in mind, you may change the composition of the shot at the last minute, nuances in the natural light that you are shooting in may change the tone or feel of the image captured, there are many variables that you simply have no control over – and some you do.

Science on the other hand doesn’t deal in chaos or expression.  It is too exact in its desire to define and create a given result.  The dictionary definition of science contains a few tell tale words; Objective, systematic, formulated, organised…  Look up the word ‘art’ in a dictionary and words such as; Creative, imaginative, ideas, skill, workmanship, expression…  See where I’m going with this?

I’m not knocking science here, I’m a fan.  It’s just the overlay of the word science with photography simply doesn’t sit right for me.  The act of taking a stunning image requires an artistic eye; it’s not a formulated, objective and organised act.  It’s one of chaos, and choice and changing your mind about the F stop or the ISO at the last minute.  But wait, is it?

Any photographer will tell you that you need to know what you are doing.  You can’t just pick up a camera and start randomly shooting and expect to create perfect or even interesting images.  A group of researchers gave a group of chimps a video camera recently.  The chimps walked around and shot video with it and yes, it was pretty chaotic, but was it any good?  Well no, not really.  So organisation and a systematic and formulaic approach are needed after all.

Maybe what I’m actually saying here is that we shouldn’t be so hung up about sorting one from the other;  maybe the two can and in fact do coexist in digital photography.  Think about this for a moment.  The ability to create a truly stunning image requires an artistic eye, it demands creativity from the author, an idea, the use of imagination and skill, but it also requires structured knowledge.  The ability to organise and operate all of your equipment, select the right F stop or shutter speed, and even to be able to apply a tried and tested formula to get the style of image that you desire.  There you have it; both science and art working together hand in hand.

Even if you were to argue that the actual act of photographing a subject is artistic, the processing of that captured image must follow a scientific approach.  Any image manipulation software that you may use requires an organised, formulaic and often systematic approach to get the best results.  Even if you use it to just tweak your levels or highlights.  Try putting one of those chimps with a video camera in front of a video editing package and see what results you get.  Interesting? Yes.  Usable and watchable? No.

For me, it’s a balance, a collaboration if you will, even though the two seem miles apart.  Digital photography needs artistry from the photographer, but it also needs science to compliment it.  It’s not as clear cut as you may think.

SSD and the photographer

New products and technologies with their hyped up features and promises of ‘changing the way you work’ always leave me cold.  So it was with great interest that I took a look at a new technology called ‘SSD’.  This article explains what it is and why photographers should care.

SSD stands for Sold State Drive and is often referred to by many manufacturers as the replacement for HDDs or Hard Disk Drives.  I think this claim misses the point and distracts from the real benefit of using an SSD.  Consider HDDs for a moment; we all use them and we have been since the PC was invented.  In fact hard disks have been around for over fifty years and have changed very little other than being miniaturised.  If you were to take a look at the humble hard disk inside your computer you would see that it is actually a mechanical device with moving heads and spinning disks – that’s why we call them ‘hard disks’ (don’t do this by the way – it will kill your drive!).  It is this construction that has changed little in the last fifty years and is often the main cause for hard disk failure.

SSDs on the other hand seem to have solved many of the issues that affect hard disks and therefore provide greater reliability, especially in laptop and notebook computers.  As there are no mechanical parts, they are not sensitive to vibration or shock, so they are actually really useful when out and about shooting on location.  They also care little about the temperatures or conditions that they work in, so dust and humidity are of little concern.

The trouble is (as I mentioned before) many manufacturers of SSDs are claiming that they are the replacement of hard disks.  I don’t think this is necessarily true or feasible; especially in desktop systems.  Consider how you work with your data as a photographer; you most likely have all of your images stored on various hard disks.  I don’t think this should change.  SSDs are lightning fast, but they can be a bit pricey compared to hard disks, so they are best not used for data storage, but for system performance upgrades.  Of course for your laptop they may be the only drive, but for desktops there is no reason why they cannot coexist.

If you have your PC operating system and applications on the SSD and your data (images for instance) on your hard disks then your system should fly.  Adobe Photoshop loves SSDs and will start in the blink of an eye, manipulate images faster and apply filters and effects at an amazing pace.  I run Windows XP, and with my Kingston Technology SSD it starts up from cold in roughly a tenth of the time it used to when it just had an HDD to boot from.  If you are going to spend the money on an SSD make it work, don’t just let it sit there with data on it.

If viewed as a system upgrade to provide super fast performance, SSDs are great and well worth the cost.  Bought as a medium to store your images on; you are wasting your money.