School photo session in life. School photographer, photographer to school Photographing high school students

At first glance, household portrait photography is the simplest photographic job. But this is only at first glance. I had a chance to shoot in schools and kindergartens for several years. A beginner with good theoretical training and practice, say, reportage shooting, may take more than one month to establish more or less correct technological cycle... Only after that, the number of photos not bought by parents will be set at about six percent.

It will take two years to reclaim your own piece of space in the world of children's institutions, where you can steadily earn your daily bread and at the same time hope that the head of "your school" will not give herself up to another, more successful, more skilled or more generous photographer.

Work begins not with shooting, but with finding a job. The photographer has to comb residential areas, receiving rejection after rejection, until he persuades some director of a children's institution to let him in to the "feeding trough" - and then you have to be on full alert.
Manufacturing process requires careful organization. The fact is that only one lesson can be spent on shooting one class. And not every teacher agrees to disrupt their lesson. The schedule of photo shootings is usually made for more than one day, and if something breaks down in the mechanism during the course of work, it is not easy to return the process to an established channel. That is why keeping the rhythm is one of the most important components of the technology of work at school. There are twenty-five to forty-five students in the class. The lesson is forty-five minutes long. Therefore, the photographer has only one minute for each portrait. Sometimes you have to photograph more than four hundred people a day.
A portable studio in a miniature version consists of two studio flashes with leading halogen lamps, two photo umbrellas, a reflector screen (light disc), a background and five support legs.
The studio is usually set right in the school hallway. A cloth background is hung on racks near the wall. The low-back chair can be attached to the floor in any way you can.
If this is not done, then exactly half of the time allotted for the shooting of the class will be spent on a senseless struggle with the desire of each child to find a new, more suitable place for a chair.
And in no case should this be allowed, since this will change the distance from the chair to the background and from the source of the drawing light to the student's face.
The minimum flash power is 150 joules. It is good if there is a possibility of dividing the power in half. The flash should be ready to fire almost immediately after firing. The ten seconds required to charge some flashes is too long. The change house does not tolerate such pauses.
A stand with a flash and a photo umbrella, which should provide a key light, must be installed at a certain distance from the head of the subject once and for all. To do this, you can start a measuring tape, and draw a sector of a circle on the floor with chalk. If necessary, it will be possible to move the flash stand along this line during operation, without spending precious seconds on repeated exposure metering. I put the painting light to my left. The counter must also be kept in a strictly defined place. In this scheme, he not only highlights the hair and shoulders, but also the background. That is why it makes sense for him to adapt a small photo umbrella.
It is very important to keep the positions of the flash, chair and background unchanged once calculated. It is known that the illumination of an object decreases in inverse proportion to the square of the distance to the light source. It is enough to move the flash away from the child's face by thirty centimeters or lean forward, and the distance from the light source to the subject will change by thirty percent. In practice, this will lead to a very noticeable difference in the density of adjacent frames. No printer will bother with each frame separately. Have good photographer all files are the same in density and contrast. The bad one has everything mixed up, both underexposed and overexposed. Operators have to fiddle with correcting each portrait and waste time. Good printer operators with bad photographers does not work. For the right to work with them, a photographer must fight, compete.
Through trial and error, I came to the conclusion that it is best to use an aluminized photo umbrella at school (white cloth scatters light too much and consumes a lot of energy, the aperture drops to 5.6). An aluminized umbrella with a diameter of 100 cm reflects a lot of light and gives a clear cut-off pattern with soft transitions from light to shadow. The flash, switched on at a power of 150 J at a distance of 130 cm from the umbrella to the child's eyes, gives an aperture of 8 (the sensitivity of the film-matrix is \u200b\u200b100 ASA). It is bad to move such an umbrella more than thirty meters from the eyes of the subject. At the same time, it ceases to give a soft cut-off pattern, and it is not worth using an umbrella of a larger diameter, since it takes up too much space, blocking off half of the recreational corridor. During breaks, children break loose, rush like meteors, every now and then knocking down the fence of chairs built around the studio. It costs them nothing to throw any of the flashes on the floor. Therefore, during breaks, the shooting stops, the photographer is retrained in security.
Ideally, the key light should be positioned so that it does not have to be moved too often during shooting. The height of the middle of the umbrella should be about 20 cm higher than the head of the subject, and the angle should be 45 degrees to the axis of the lens. Naturally, the flash will have to be raised when shooting graduates and lowered when shooting first graders.
The light reflector (light disc) should be to the right of the photographer, 40 cm from the child's shoulder. You should not move further - there will be gaps in the shadows. The difference in exposure in highlights and shadows on the face should ideally be equal to 0.7 stops of the aperture.
The light must be set so that the aperture is clamped to 8. At the same time, the depth of field of the portrait lens becomes optimal: the eyes are sharp, and the ears are floating. Opening a hole is even more bad, because there is no margin of depth of field left, and in case of the slightest mistake, you can get a marriage. Given the pace of shooting, it's best not to risk it.
The lens should be capable of taking a half-length portrait from arm's length. This is important, because every now and then children have to correct shirt collars, ties, bangs. Portrait painters are distinguished by their soft pattern, shallow depth of field and usually high aperture ratio. The latter is very important: if the lens is dark, the eyes will not last long. Four hundred times a day to focus on the eyes, and so for several days in a row ... It will not seem a little. When starting shooting a class, turn off autofocus and frame the frame so that the subject's head occupies three quarters of the frame, the body is not too large, and there is a small blurred background space above the head. Now focus on the child's eyes and tape the focusing ring with tape. The main thing is that in the process of work the image scale of the heads does not change. When they all come together on one cool vignette, different-sized heads will look ugly. You will have to focus by changing the position of your own head: either approaching the client's eyes, then moving away from them. It is not very convenient, but the product standard at the output is guaranteed. Another important detail. At the moment of shooting, the camera mirror rises, and you lose sight of the person for a short moment. And it is at this moment that he strives to blink. If after filming you find two or three "morguns" in each class, you can assume that you will not work anymore in this school or kindergarten. There is only one way to avoid this during the shooting process: you need to look with one eye into the lens, and the other - directly at the child and in remove the take if necessary. To insure against mistakes, every now and then looking at the digital display, is not an option - the pace of work is lost.
I filmed the kids sitting on a chair. This saved energy, since the height of the lens during shooting turned out to be optimal: just above the child's eye level. The chair was turned in the direction of the painting light so that the child, sitting down, directed his knees directly to the umbrella, and turned his head towards me. The pose turned out to be a little more dynamic than when shooting for a passport.
On the eve of shooting, children usually receive a lot of "useful" advice from their parents.
A well-trained child, sitting on a chair in front of the photographer, puffs like a bubble, begins to straighten his hair, collar, chew his own lips, or gives out such a crooked smile that it’s just right to laugh himself. In this case, a lot depends on the behavior of the photographer. You can't let the child come to his senses. As soon as you sit him down and straighten his hair and clothes yourself, immediately ask him some stupid question that has nothing to do with the shooting, but requires a switch of attention. For example: "How much is qua kva?", "What is your cat's name?", "Turn your nose a little to the left?" etc.
You should have quite a lot of such blanks in stock so that for each next child the question will be unexpected. Children usually stand in line near the studio and watch everything that happens like a small performance, in which the photographer is both the director and the actor at the same time. And because, whether children are interested in the play, their behavior during shooting depends. The moment a child hears a question, he willy-nilly switches his attention from wanting to be beautiful and controlling the muscles of his face to thinking about an unexpected question. His physiognomy at this time takes on a natural expression. This is the moment of truth, catch it, pull the trigger. After a moment, the child will think over the question and react: he will start talking, smile and again start playing "handsome".
If you failed to catch this beautiful moment, it doesn't matter - try again. You should not take pictures of talking children, squeeze smiles out of them, if they themselves do not smile at you with full confidence. Ugly teeth or any glands in the mouth are very ugly. It is better for such guys not to open their mouths at all. Parents are selling well pictures of calm, smart kids. Any extremes in the manifestation of emotions are fraught with an increased return rate of images.
Children should not be allowed to stand directly behind your back. They begin to make faces, show horns, in a word, entertain the one who is already filming. This disturbs the rhythm of the shooting, prevents the creation of an optimal mood for the whole class. Confidence, benevolence, calmness, gentle tolerance for childish pranks and at the same time firmness in organizational requirements are absolutely necessary. If you can persuade the teacher to tidy up your tomboys, and you do not waste time combing rebellious crests and tidying up collars and ties, you will be able to rent an entire class in forty-five minutes and still not "spawn" a marriage.
The older grades are more difficult to shoot. The girls are all fashion models. They can sit in a chair with their backs to the light because that side of their face seems better to them. Persuading to change seats is useless. It is necessary to prepare in advance for rearranging the light from left to right and mark the location of the stand with the umbrella with an indelible felt-tip pen on the floor. You will have to shoot the big guys while standing. Conversations with them and distracting maneuvers should be more sophisticated and humorous. Commands do not pass in an orderly tone. In a confrontational environment, filming is poor. For many guys, teenage pimples are potential "returners". They are filming, but not buying back their portraits. Therefore, stock up on good opaque powder and concealer pencils. Under the friendly laughter of the guys, you will have to paint your cheeks and foreheads at a fast pace, without listening to objections.
The result is pretty decent portraits without pimples and freckles. An alternative is computer retouching.
Filming of teachers is a special matter. They are sometimes not young, but they want to look their best. Prepare a soft filter or black stocking. Do not shoot the teacher's faces too close. It is better to reduce the scale of their heads in comparison with childish ones. Move the umbrella a little closer to the device. The light will become flatter, but there will be less shadows on the faces. Wrinkles and other skin imperfections will be less visible. How much the teacher likes his own portrait depends on how the pictures are sold.
You shouldn't go to classes yourself and collect money for photos. It is better to negotiate with a specific person at school and hand over the entire shooting to him. immediately. Twenty percent of the collected money will go to pay for the director's consent to work with you. Another expense item is free photos for caregivers, teachers and their children or grandchildren. Sometimes these children go to the same school, sometimes toddlers are brought from home. This breaks the rhythm of the shooting. Therefore, it is better to film such clients after school or in the pause between the first and second shifts.
The most amazing thing is that the school experience is smooth, without special efforts adapts to shooting office portraits of major leaders. It turned out that technically this is exactly the same job. There is no need to change the equipment. You just need to take into account the physiological characteristics of people. If the client is very bald, you should not shine a contractor on his head, you can use the ceiling as a huge softbox. A tripod with an umbrella often has to be placed directly on the client's desk. Although time is limited - big people have big worries, but you can still play with light. Psychologically, it is much easier to work with adults - they themselves are interested in the result of shooting and, unlike children, they know how to manage their emotions.
Cherish your customers. Try to meet them, and then they will not cheat on you with other photographers.

Goodbye film, goodbye!
Four years ago, right after the very first filming with a five-megapixel digital camera, I uttered these words. But a few more times, I don’t want to take the trouble-free Nikon F-5 for reportage shooting. I didn't have a full replacement for him. Now she is. The portraits of the schoolchild for the article about shooting the change house were shot by Nikon D2X, the portrait of Viktor Vekselberg - Nikon F-5 on the Fujiсhrome Astia 100 ACA slide. This is a very good fine grain professional film. In both the first and second cases, the camera was equipped with a Nikkor 80-200 / 2.8 zoom, aperture 8. In the process of preparing files for printing, I looked at both pictures at 200 percent magnification. And again he said to himself: - Farewell, film! - and added - goodbye forever!

P.S. A few words about the profitability of the change house:
The cost of the camera and mini-studio is about $ 2500. A good everyday photographer in Moscow makes over a thousand dollars a month. At the same time, the profitability of his labor is about fifty percent, that is, he keeps about half of the collected money. Today, in schools, shooting only graduation classes and the third is in demand (it is also like graduation). Parental love for children decreases sharply after the child reaches school age.

Is this your first time getting asked to shoot your graduation class for a school album, or are you just trying to get into school photography? Then this article is for you. In it we will tell you how to organize and quickly take photographs of portraits of students for the school graduation album.

So, the most important photography of a school photographer is to shoot individual portraits of each graduate. In this case, you do not yet have your own photo studio, and the rent does not fit into the budget, so we will proceed from what we have at hand.

1. If the weather permits, we leave the premises to get better quality natural light.

2. If you know that you are too lazy to then cut (isolate) each portrait, then we are looking for a suitable background. To do this, in turn, you need to consider several things:

2.1. To make the background as far as possible from the place where the photo was taken, thus it will be possible to “blur” it as much as possible without opening the aperture to the maximum;

2.2. So that the background is a more or less uniform texture without clear horizontal and vertical lines, so that later you do not bother with the alignment of each picture;

2.3. So that the place where the shooting will be carried out is in the shade. So you will avoid overexposure and will be able to shoot portraits with high quality in a completely manual mode, which will give you the opportunity to get a ready-made image at the output, which will not take much time and effort for you to correct and process in the editor. The most you have to do is raise the curve a little to increase contrast and sharpen it. Everything, the portrait is ready for the graduation album!

2.4. To give such a portrait a more artistic effect, it is advisable to include a play of light in the composition, but this must be done correctly. The easiest way is to find such a place so that the sun illuminates the place between the model and the background - this will give an artistic dimension to your photo, and then no one will reproach you for not wanting to cut out portraits of graduates and artificially place them on the "beautiful" background.

Where can you find such an ideal location? Yes, all the time. The most accessible is schoolyard: Alumni location in the shade of the school building, background is a green fence in the shade of trees, and between them a sunlit space.

This can be found and organized in most schools. The optimal time is either before 11 am, or after 15 or more, depending on the time of year. A city park or an alley near the stadium is also a good option for photographing school graduations.

Definitely a school photo album, general photos class or group, as well as single photographs of students are an important component life stage each person. It is by looking at these photographs that many years later people remember their classmates how their life went. exactly the same person who creates these most wonderful works.

We have been photographing schoolchildren, students, shooting in kindergartens, creating school photo albums, group photos, vignettes and graduation photo albums for over 15 years. Behind our shoulders is a huge number of beautiful images created by us and magnificent photo books that are stored on the shelves of our clients. The main types of work that our photographers create and prices are presented below.

Stock

BEFORE THE PRICE INCREASED BY 30%, TOTAL REMAINS:

FIND OUT THE COST OF A SCHOOL PHOTOGRAPHER NOW !!!

Our prices

School, graduation photo albums and photo albums for kindergarten:

Single photos and single photo collages:

Group photos:

School brochure ("folder"):

Our work

The modern school album is fundamentally different from the albums that we saw in the 80s and 90s of the last century. This is gorgeous printing, unique design, creative approach and professional photography.

Photos for an album are usually shot in a studio. If this is not possible, our school photographer Moscow go to you to shoot a class or group on the spot (at school or college). A unique design is selected for each album, which is carefully coordinated with the customer.

Filming can also be carried out either with a visit to a professional, specially equipped studio, or on the spot, in your kindergarten. All necessary equipment available from our photographers. We take both individual photos of each, and group photos of children. All these photos go to the photo album, which is prepared for printing in the printing industry and then delivered to you.

The graduation photo album is an integral part of the last year of study, closely connected with the warmest memories of each person's first Alma Mater. We try to take not just protocol photos of the whole class, but to approach the creation of the album creatively, filling it with staged pictures of students, group photos, pictures of teachers and the school itself, and reportage pictures, for example with preparation for prom, covering the leisure of schoolchildren, their hobbies, hobbies.

Our school photographer Moscow a true master of creating vivid, vivid, memorable photos!

Studio photo session

In order to create truly stunning photographs, the best place is a specialized photography studio. As a rule, for such filming, a centralized visit to the studio is carried out and filming is carried out there. The studio allows you to use better quality light, change clothes, invite a make-up artist to shoot and, of course, provides a wide selection of interiors, various backgrounds and accessories.

Single photos

For such shooting, our school photographer Moscow goes to your school and takes pictures on site. A series of single photographs is created against a background. Photos are printed either singly in the formats of your choice, or a collage is created, as in the examples presented.

The classic school vignette will never become outdated. We have a huge base of background substrates, the choice of which is always agreed with the customer. Photographs are classically shot against a plain background, after which they are placed on a vignette, printed in the required circulation and given to the customer.

Group photos

Group photography is also the De Facto standard in school photography that has existed for many years. Children together with teachers are placed together in one group, after which photographs are taken. Such pictures can be collated with others or printed as is without borders.

Graduation photos ("folder")

One of the most popular types of school photographs is photographs made in the form of a brochure, or as it is also called folders. This is a double-sided booklet on heavy paper. 4 pages, where photographs are artistically edited by the designer. As a rule, this is a group photo of the class or a vignette, a single photo of a child and an informal photo with friends, but it is possible to make any individual design at your request.

Our main advantages:

Adequate pricing, pricing packages to suit any budget and hourly rate!
Photo preparation time - 3-4 days;
Discounts for regular customers... Special discount programs for our clients;
Delivery of finished photo materials - FREE OF CHARGE;
Only professional TOP equipment;

ORDER A SCHOOL PHOTOGRAPHER RIGHT NOW !!!

Our equipment

We work only with professional equipment (Canon EOS 1Ds, EOS 5D Mark III cameras, TOP-L-series lenses).

Photo processing also takes place according to special author's algorithms on calibrated designer monitors. High-quality equipment and a professional approach to shooting also affect the final cost of the service. "School photographer Moscow", but on the other hand, they allow you to provide customers with a truly professional high-quality result.

No tortured grimaces and hackneyed ideas for photos. By contacting RHINODESIGN, you will receive graduation albums with lively faces and interesting pictures. Leave the photographs with people lined up in silly poses at the behest of the photographer. They need it more.

How is the photo session going?

We do not dictate terms to you. How the photo session will take place is up to you. Do you want in a photo studio, you want in the walls educational institution, and you want to be outdoors, in a park or elsewhere in Moscow, Moscow region or St. Petersburg.

We will implement any ideas so that in the end your graduation album becomes special. So that after many years you will open it and remember all the people who are captured in these pictures. We relived all the pleasant moments from our past.

For you, the photo session will take place according to a separate scenario. Plus, we take into account the specifics of work with each age. We have in the state professional photographersspecializing in certain types of filming:

Photo sessions for kindergarten;
Photo sessions for grade 4;
Photo sessions for grade 9;
Photo sessions for grade 11;
Photo sessions for graduates of institutes and universities.

How are the photography going

As a rule, photography takes place in two stages:

Studio photo session;
Reportage photo session.

In the studio we shoot general photos of the group, class. Then, in the place of your choice, we photograph the graduates individually and with their friends, favorite teachers, teachers, educators.

Additionally, you can order filming directly from the celebration. At the moment when children, boys and girls say goodbye to the next passed stage in their lives. Our photographers capture the most sincere emotions so that they stay with you forever.

We are responsible for quality. We do not delay the deadlines. We work under a formal contract, which reflects the entire responsibility of RHINODESIGN to customers.

How to prepare for your graduation photo

The top tip for anyone getting ready for their prom photography is getting some sleep. Fresh faces is half the battle. Decide on a place for a photo shoot and think about your image in advance.

Think about whether all participants in the photo shoot will be dressed in the same style, or everyone wants to emphasize their individuality. It is also worth considering the decor of the room in which the shooting will be carried out in advance.

The rest is the work of our photographers. It doesn't matter if you are preparing for your graduation from kindergarten, school or university. RHINODESIGN specialists have many years of experience in organizing photo sessions and creating gorgeous albums.

How albums are created

You choose the design of your album yourself. We have over 100 ready-made options to choose from. It is possible to develop a completely unique design for you.

Which photos will be included in your photo album, you also choose yourself. Thus, each graduate remains completely

Not all photographers work with models. The job of many photographers is to take pictures of ordinary people and our task is to make them look like models in the pictures. How can we do this if our clients have no experience with posing or manipulating their faces in front of the camera? Here are seven tips to help your subjects feel like models.

1. Working with hair

We often don't think of hair as a part of the body that can be controlled, but it is possible! If you are photographing a person with long hair, then poorly lying hair will be the first thing that catches your eye in the photograph. No general rule to make the hair in the frame look "super". To different people different options for the location of the hair are suitable.

Let's say you are doing simple portrait photography without a makeup artist or hairdresser. The first thing to remember is that the hair on your shoulders looks terrible. They give the model a wild look and something needs to be done about it. Here are six options for working with long hair.

The original wild option
All hair in the back
All hair in front
Hair on one side in front
Hair on the other side in front
Hair collected

Option # 1 should be avoided at all costs. All other options are applicable depending on the model and the effect you want to achieve. The existence of options 4 and 5 is explained by the fact that in real life hair can look better on one side than on the other.

Usually you want people to look at the camera so that most of the face is visible. For this article, I chose option # 6 with her hair pulled together so that you can better see how the girl follows my instructions and does not distract anything. For many women, the "ponytail" is a home hairstyle, but it looks very nice in portraits, revealing the face.

2. Move your chin (or ears) forward

When a person is standing normally and relaxed, or even standing beautifully and posing, a small crease can be seen under the chin. This manifests itself almost regardless of thinness. If you offer people to push their chin forward, which sounds obvious to you, they will most likely point their chins towards you, which will look like photographing nostrils (not very attractive). So instead, invite your model to move their ears forward.

"Before" and "after" sentences to move the ears forward.

The same thing from the outside. I sometimes call it "turtle" because it is like pulling its head out of its shell. It can be a little uncomfortable or unnatural, but the result always justifies the inconvenience.

The same technique performed by a man. He is fit and athletic, but his chin is still not photogenic enough in a natural position.

3. Raise your arms

When people just stand as usual, their hands are often clasped on both sides. This causes several problems. First, they look awkward and uncomfortable in photographs. Secondly, the hands pressed against the body look thicker than they really are.

This can be corrected by simply raising your hands a few centimeters so that they do not press against the body. Or you can put your hands in some position, for example, leaning on your hip. In the picture above, the red line indicates the apparent size of the hand before the position change. A line of the same length in the second picture shows how much thinner the hand looks without being pressed against the body.

4. Leave visual space around the waist

Everyone likes to look slimmer. One of simple waysthat you can make your client slimmer is to show his "natural" waist without any additions. I mean visually isolating the waist so it doesn't look wider than it is. My model is standing with her hands on her hips. The first photo shows a poor position. The arm behind the body is not visually separated from it and adds width to the waist. But if you move your hand a little forward, space will appear, so that nothing will be added to the size of the waist.

The red line shows the apparent width of the body in the first photo. It has been moved to the second photo to show how much the hand added. This rule applies not only to the hands. Anything in the background behind the model can create this effect. For example, other people, tree trunks, lamp posts.

5. Rotate the Shoulders

This is a very simple but important tip. If a person is standing straight in front of the camera, he looks bigger. This is good if you are shooting a football player or a director of a large company, but not very suitable for shooting model portraits. When turned, the model shows a more beautiful profile and looks slimmer.

The red line shows the width of the model facing the camera. A slight twist gives a photo of the model still looking at the camera, but with a slimmer profile.

6. Don't show the whites of your eyes

If you want to capture a distant, dreamy gaze away from the camera, don't ask the model to look into the distance. Point to a specific object behind you so you can control the direction of your gaze.

In the first shot, I asked the models to look towards the door next to us. You see mostly the whites of her eyes, that's not good. You want to see the iris, the colored part. I invited her to look out the window. A slight change in the direction of the gaze brought her eyes back to us and we got a more attractive portrait.

7. Don't let your nose interrupt your face

This rule is a little more complicated, but also important. If you don't want to take a full-face shot, you ask the model to turn slightly to the side. Let's say you don't want to shoot a classic profile, in which only one side of the face will be visible, and the model will rotate about a quarter so that both eyes are visible. If you mentally draw a line along the side of the face, then this line should not intersect with the nose.

If she turns too much, the nose will cross this line, which will ruin the natural contour of the face. This creates the effect of "Pinocchio" and visually increases the length of the nose. To avoid this, ask the model to turn slightly back towards the camera so that there is some space between the tip of the nose and the edge of the face. You don't have to cross this line or your facial features will look out of proportion.

Putting it all together

Here's a sample list you can follow on your next shoot.

Hair pulled back on one shoulder and loose in front of the other.
The chin is extended to create a stronger face line.
The arm is raised from the body.
The waist has no visual enlargers.
The shoulders are turned.
The pupils are visible, not the whites of the eyes.
The nose does not cross the face line.

What do you do to ordinary people turned out in photographs as models? Share your thoughts on the tips you read or your own tricks in the comments.

About the author:Ben Lucas - Seattle-based portrait and wedding photographer... He strives to preserve the best emotions of his clients, be they brides, actors, chefs or even lawyers. You can follow his news at

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