I want to have a fully functioning studio up in running within a year so I’ll need a good studio sample portfolio to show prospective clients.  To accomplish this, I’m doing TFP (trading time for prints) work and paid sessions with professional models that I’ve found through Model Mayhem and One Model Place.   Using professional models allows me to learn from their experience with other photographers and to utilize their skills in front of the camera to improve my skills behind the camera.  Some photographers are very uncomfortable working with people, and especially professional models in front of the camera.  I enjoy it and hope to improve as time goes by.

Here is an excerpt of the studio portion of a shoot that I did last week with Tabitha, a beautiful young model with recent experience  modeling in New York.

I used this image from the shoot as one of my studio samples.

Lessons learned from this shoot:

1. A single WL 1600 worked fine to drive the seamless paper background completely white.  Except for the horizontal portion around her feet while sitting on the floor, but this was easily handled in post processing.

2. Making a video of the shoot is time consuming and I need to put the camera into the hands of a real person.  Having it on a tripod gives me too much video to look through to find decent excerpts.

3. I need to do some more thrift store shopping for props and clothes.  Outfits that are too large for one model can be pinned for a smaller model.  A small range of sizes is really all that’s necessary.