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

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

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

Work does not begin with shooting, but with finding a job. The photographer has to scour residential areas, getting refusal after refusal, until he persuades some director of the children's institution to let him go to the "trough" - and then you have to be in full combat readiness.
Manufacturing process requires careful organization. The fact is that you can spend only one lesson on a photo shoot of one class. And not every teacher agrees to disrupt his lesson. The photo shooting schedule is usually drawn up for more than one day, and if something suddenly breaks in the mechanism in the course of work, it is not easy to return the process to the established course. That is why the observance of 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 a class. The lesson lasts forty-five minutes. Therefore, the photographer has only one minute for each portrait. Sometimes more than four hundred people have to be photographed in a day.
Portable studio in a miniature version consists of two studio flashes with leading halogen lamps, two photo umbrellas, a reflector screen (light disk), a background and five support stands.
The studio is usually installed right in the school corridor. A fabric background is hung on racks near the wall. A chair with a low back is attached to the floor in any way possible for you.
If this is not done, then exactly half of the time allotted for filming the class will be spent on a senseless struggle with the desire of each child to find a new, more suitable place for the 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 key light to the student's face.
The minimum flash output is 150 joules. Well, if there is the possibility of dividing the power in half. The flash should be ready to fire almost immediately after firing. The ten seconds it takes 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 key light, must be installed once and for all at a certain distance from the head of the person being portrayed. To do this, you can start a measuring tape, and draw a sector of a circle on the floor with chalk. If necessary, along this line it will be possible to move the flash stand during operation, without wasting precious seconds on repeated exposure measurements. I put the key light on my left. The counter also needs to 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 once calculated positions of the flashes, the chair and the background unchanged. 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 person being portrayed will change by thirty percent. In practice, this will lead to a very noticeable difference in the densities of neighboring frames. No printer will bother with each frame separately. At good photographer all files are the same in density and contrast. The bad one has everything mixed up, both underexposed and overexposed. Operators are forced to fiddle with the correction of each portrait, losing time. Good printer operators with bad photographers does not work. For the right to work with them, the 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 fabric scatters light too much and devours a lot of energy, while the aperture drops to 5.6). An aluminized umbrella with a diameter of 100 cm reflects a lot of light and gives a distinct black and white pattern with soft transitions from light to shadow. A flash turned on at a power of 150 joules at a distance from the umbrella to the child's eyes of 130 cm gives aperture 8 (film-matrix sensitivity 100 ASA). To move such an umbrella more than thirty meters from the eyes of the person being portrayed is bad. At the same time, it ceases to give a soft light and shade 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. Children at recess break loose, rush like meteors, now and then knocking down the fence of chairs built around the studio. It costs them nothing to fill up any of the flashes on the floor. Therefore, at breaks, shooting stops, the photographer retrains as a security guard.
Ideally, the key light should be placed so that it does not have to be moved too often during the shooting. The height of the middle of the umbrella should be about 20 cm above the head of the person being portrayed, 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 placed to the right of the photographer, 40 cm from the child's shoulder. You should not push it further - there will be gaps in the shadows. The exposure difference in highlights and shadows on the face should ideally be 0.7 f-stops.
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, and in the event of the slightest mistake, you can get a marriage. Given the pace of shooting, it's best not to risk it.
The lens should allow you to shoot a half-length portrait from an arm's length. This is important, because now and then children have to straighten shirt collars, ties, and bangs. Portrait lenses are distinguished by their soft pattern, shallow depth of field, and usually large aperture. The latter is very important: if the lens is dark, the eye will not last long. Focus on the eyes four hundred times a day, and so on for several days in a row ... It won’t seem enough. When shooting a class, turn off autofocus and frame the frame so that the head of the person being portrayed occupies three-quarters of the frame, there is not too much of the body, and there is a small space of a blurry background above the head. Now focus on the child's eyes and seal the focusing ring with tape. The main thing is that the scale of the image of the heads does not change in the process of work. When they all come together on one cool vignette, heads of different sizes will look ugly. You will have to focus by changing the position of your own head: either approaching the client’s eyes, or moving away from them. Not very convenient, but the product is guaranteed standard at the output. Another important little thing. At the moment of shooting, the camera mirror is raised, and you lose sight of the person for a brief moment. And it is at this moment that he strives to blink. If, after shooting, you find two or three “blinkers” in each class, you can assume that you will no longer work in this school or kindergarten. There is only one way to avoid this during the shooting: you need to look with one eye into the lens, and with the other - directly at the child and in double if necessary. To insure against mistakes, now and then looking at the digital display, is not an option - the pace of work gets lost.
I photographed the kids sitting on a chair. This saved energy, since the height of the lens during the shooting turned out to be optimal: just above the level of the child's eyes. The chair was turned in the direction of the drawing light so that the child, sitting down, directed his knees directly to the umbrella, and turned his head towards me. The pose turned out 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 trained child, sitting on a chair in front of the photographer, inflates like a bubble, begins to straighten her hair, collar, chew her own lips, or gives out such a wry smile that it is just right to burst out laughing. A lot in this case depends on the behavior of the photographer. You can't let a child recover. 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 shooting, but requires a switch of attention. For example: “How much will kvazhda 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 is 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 of whether the children are interested in the performance, their behavior during the shooting depends. At the moment when the child hears the question, he willy-nilly shifts his attention from the desire to be beautiful and control the muscles of the face to thinking about an unexpected question. His physiognomy at this time acquires a natural expression. This is the moment of truth, catch it, press the trigger. After a moment, the child will think about the question and respond: he will begin to speak, smile and begin to play “handsome” again.
If you failed to catch this wonderful moment, it does not matter - try again. You should not shoot talking children, squeeze smiles out of them if they themselves do not smile at you with full confidence. Uneven teeth or all sorts of glands in the mouth are very ugly. It's better for these guys not to open their mouths at all. Pictures of calm, smart kids are well bought up by parents. Any extremes in the manifestation of emotions are fraught with an increased percentage of the return of images.
Children should not be allowed to stand directly behind you. They begin to make faces, show horns, in a word, entertain the one who is already filming. This knocks down the rhythm of shooting, interferes with the creation of the optimal mood of the whole class. Confidence, benevolence, calmness, mild tolerance for children's pranks and at the same time firmness in organizational requirements are absolutely necessary. If you manage to persuade the teacher to tidy up her tomboys, and you do not waste time combing recalcitrant tufts and putting collars and ties in order, you will be able to remove the entire class in forty-five minutes and not "produce" marriage.
Senior classes are more difficult to shoot. The girls are all fashion models. They may sit in a chair with their back to the light because that side of their face seems better to them. Asking to move is useless. It is necessary to prepare in advance for the rearrangement of the light from left to right and mark with an indelible felt-tip pen on the floor the place of installation of the stand with an umbrella. Large guys will have to shoot while standing. Conversations with them and distractions should be more sophisticated and humorous. Commands in an orderly tone do not pass. In a confrontational environment, filming goes badly. For many guys, teenage pimples are potential "returners". They are removed, but do not redeem their portraits. Therefore, stock up on good covering powder and masking pencils. Under the friendly laughter of the guys, they will have to paint their cheeks and foreheads at a fast pace, not listening to objections.
The result is quite decent portraits without pimples and freckles. The alternative is computer retouching.
A special case is the shooting of teachers. They are sometimes not young, but they want to look their best. Prepare a soft filter or black stocking. Do not shoot teachers' faces close. The scale of their heads is better to reduce in comparison with the childish ones. Move the umbrella a little closer to the machine. The light will become flatter, but there will also 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 will be sold.
You should not go to classes yourself and collect money for photographs. It is better to agree with a specific person at school and hand over the entire shooting to him straightaway. Twenty percent of the money raised will go to pay for the consent of the director to work with you. Another item of expenditure is free photographs for caregivers, teachers and their children or grandchildren. Sometimes these children attend the same school, sometimes toddlers are brought from home. It breaks the rhythm of shooting. Therefore, it is better to shoot such clients after lessons or in a pause between the first and second shifts.
The most amazing thing is that the experience of working at school smoothly, without special efforts adapts to shooting armchair portraits of major executives. It turned out that technically it is exactly the same job. The equipment does not need to be changed. You just need to take into account the physiological characteristics of people. If the client is very bald, you should not shine a light 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 workbench. Although time is limited - big people have big worries, but you can still play with the 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 control their emotions.
Cherish your customers. Try to meet them halfway, and then they will not cheat on you with other photographers.

Farewell film, farewell!
Four years ago, right after the very first shooting with a five-megapixel digital camera, I said 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 perfect replacement for it. Now she is. Portraits of a schoolboy for an article about shooting a change house were taken by Nikon D2X, a portrait of Viktor Vekselberg - Nikon F-5 on a Fujichrome 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 the 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 change houses:
The cost of the camera and mini-studio is approximately $2,500. A good everyday photographer in Moscow earns more than a thousand dollars a month. At the same time, the profitability of his work is approximately fifty percent, that is, of the collected money, he keeps about half for himself. Today, schools demand shooting only graduation classes and the third (he is also like a graduation). Parental love for children sharply decreases after the child reaches school age.

Is this the first time you've been approached to shoot your senior year for your high school album, or are you just trying to get into high 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 a 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 room to get better natural light.

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

2.1. So that the background is as far as possible from the place of photography, in this way 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 don’t bother with aligning each shot;

2.3. So that the place where the shooting will be carried out is in the shade. This way you will avoid overexposure and will be able to shoot high-quality portraits in a fully manual mode, which will give you the opportunity to get a ready-made picture at the output, which will not take you much effort and time for correction and processing in the editor. The most you'll have to do is raise the curve a little to increase the 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 desirable to include a play of light in the composition, but this must be done correctly. The easiest way is to find a place where 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 the portraits of graduates and artificially place them on the “beautiful” background.

Where can you find such an ideal place? Yes, all around. The most accessible is schoolyard: the location of the graduates in the shadow of the school building, the background is a green fence in the shade of trees, and between them a space lit by the sun.

This can be found and organized in most schools. Optimal time this is either before 11 o'clock in the morning, or after 15 o'clock and further, 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 individual photographs of students is 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 path went. just the same person who creates these most beautiful works.

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

Stock

TOTAL LEFT BEFORE THE PRICE INCREASE BY 30%:

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

Our prices

School, graduation photo albums and photo albums for kindergarten:

Single photos and collages with single photos:

Group photos:

School brochure ("folder"):

Our work

The modern school album is fundamentally different from those albums that we saw in the 80s and 90s of the last century. This is a chic printing, the author's unique design, creativity and professional photography.

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

Shooting 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 are included in the photo album, which is being prepared for printing in the printing industry and then delivered to you.

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

Our school photographer Moscow a real master of creating lively, bright, memorable photos!

Studio photo session

In order to create truly amazing photographs, the best place is a specialized photo studio. As a rule, for such filming, a centralized trip to the studio is carried out and shooting is carried out there. The studio allows you to use better lighting, change clothes, invite a make-up artist for shooting and, of course, provides a rich choice of interiors, various backgrounds and accessories.

single photos

For such a survey, our school photographer Moscow travels to your school and shoots on the spot. A series of single photographs is created against a background. Photos are printed either singly in the formats you choose, or a collage is created, as in the examples presented.

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

group photos

Group photos are also the De Facto standard in school photography that has been around for many years. Children, along with teachers, are placed together in one group, after which photographs are taken. Such pictures can be collaged 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 thick paper. 4 pages, where photos are artistically assembled by the designer. As a rule, this is a group photo of a 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 according to your desire.

Our main advantages:

Adequate prices, price packages that satisfy any budget and hourly pay!
The term for preparing photos is 3-4 days;
Discounts for regular customers. Special discount programs for our clients;
Delivery of ready-made photo materials - FREE OF CHARGE;
Only professional TOP equipment;

ORDER A SCHOOL PHOTOGRAPHER RIGHT NOW!!!

Our equipment

We only work with professional equipment (Canon cameras EOS 1Ds, EOS 5D Mark III, 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 us to provide customers with a truly professional quality result.

No forced grimaces and hackneyed ideas for photos. Turning to RHINODESIGN, you will receive graduation albums with lively faces and interesting pictures. And leave photos with people lined up in stupid poses at the behest of the photographer. They need more.

How is the photo shoot going?

We do not dictate terms to you. How the photo session will take place is up to you. Want in a photo studio, want in the walls educational institution, but you want in nature, in a park or anywhere else in Moscow, Moscow region or St. Petersburg.

We will bring to life any ideas so that in the end your graduation album will become special. So that after many years you open it and remember all the people who are captured in these pictures. Re-experienced all the pleasant moments from your past.

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

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

How is 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, the class. Then, in the place of your choice, we photograph the graduates individually and with their friends, beloved teachers, teachers, and educators.

Additionally, you can order shooting 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 delivery. We work under an official contract, which reflects all the responsibility of RHINODESIGN to customers.

How to prepare for your prom photo shoot

The main tip for anyone preparing for a prom shoot is to get enough sleep. Fresh faces are half the battle. Decide on a place for a photo shoot and think over your image in advance.

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

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

How albums are made

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

What photos will be included in your photo album, you also choose yourself. Thus, each graduate has absolutely

Not all photographers work with models. The job of many photographers is to shoot ordinary people and our task is to make them look like models in the pictures. How to do this if our clients have no experience in posing or controlling their face in front of the camera? Here are seven tips to help your subjects feel like they're 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 shooting a person with long hair, then ill-fitting hair will be the first thing that catches your eye in the photo. Not general rule to make the hair in the frame look "super". To different people suitable for different hair arrangements.

Let's say you're doing a simple portrait shoot without a makeup artist or hairdresser. The first thing to remember is that shoulder-length hair 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" version
All hair in the back
All hair in front
Hair on one side in front
Hair on the other side of the 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 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 number 6 with collected hair, so that you can better see how the girl follows my instructions and nothing distracts. For many women, the ponytail is a homemade 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 nicely and posing, a slight crease can be seen under the chin. This manifests itself almost regardless of thinness. If you tell people to tilt their chin forward, which sounds obvious to you, they are more likely to point their chins at you, which looks like a nostril shot (not very attractive). So instead, ask your model to move their ears forward.

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

Same thing from the side. I sometimes call it "turtle" because it's like a turtle pulling its head out of its shell. It may be a little uncomfortable or unnatural, but the result always justifies these inconveniences.

The same technique performed by a man. He's fit and athletic, but his chin isn't photogenic enough in a natural pose.

3. Raise your hands

When people are just standing as usual, they often have their arms pressed to either side. This causes several problems. Firstly, they look awkward and uncomfortable in photographs. Secondly, the arms pressed against the body look thicker than they really are.

This can be corrected by simply raising your arms a few centimeters so that they do not press against the body. Or you can put your hands in some position, for example, resting on your thigh. In the figure above, the red line indicates the apparent size of the arm before the reposition. A line of the same length in the second figure shows how much thinner the arm looks when it is not pressed against the body.

4. Leave visual space around the waist

Everyone likes to look slimmer. One of simple ways The way you can make your client slimmer is to show their "natural" waistline without any additions. I mean visually isolating the waist so that it looks no wider than it is. My model is standing with her hands on her hips. The first photo shows not the best position. The arm behind the body is not visually separated from it and adds width to the waist. But if you move your arm a little forward, there will be space, so nothing will be added to the waist size.

The red line shows the apparent width of the hull in the first photo. It has been moved to the second photo to show how much the hand added. This rule doesn't just apply to hands. Anything in the background behind the model can create this effect. It can be, for example, other people, tree trunks, lampposts.

5. Rotate Shoulders

This is a very simple but important tip. If a person stands exactly 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. Turning the model shows a more beautiful profile and looks slimmer.

The red line shows the width of the model standing straight in front of the camera. A slight twist results in a photo of the model still facing the camera, but with a slimmer profile.

6. Don't show the whites of your eyes

If you want to capture a distant, dreamy look 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 invited the model 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 suggested she look out the window. A slight change in the direction of the gaze brought her eyes back to us and a more attractive portrait turned out.

7. Don't let your nose interrupt the contour of your face

This rule is a little more complicated, but also important. If you do not want to take a frontal shot, you ask the model to turn slightly to the side. Let's say you don't want to shoot a classic profile where only one side of the face is visible, and the model will turn 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 be crossed by the nose.

If she turns too much, the nose will cross this line, ruining the natural contour of the face. This creates the effect of "Pinocchio" and visually increases the length of the nose. To avoid this, you should ask the model to turn slightly back to the camera so that there is some space between the tip of the nose and the edge of the face. You must not cross this line or the facial features will look disproportionate.

Putting it all together

Here is an example list that you can follow on your next shoot.

Her hair is pulled back over one shoulder and loose in front of the other.
The chin is pushed out to create a stronger facial line.
The arm is raised from the body.
The waist has no visual enlargers.
Shoulders turned.
The pupils are visible, not the whites of the eyes.
The nose does not cross the line of the face.

What are you doing 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 is a Seattle-based portrait and wedding photographer. He strives to keep the best emotions of his clients whether they are brides, actors, chefs or even lawyers. You can follow his news at

It might be useful to read: