Virtual Photo Shoot

Have you ever considered booking a virtual photoshoot? I have seen some other amazing photographers who have practised this type of shoot during the lockdown and have produced some wonderful branded photographs for other companies.

Currently, we are all starting to open back up and can book photograph sessions outside or on-location with one other person on a 1:1 basis to keep to the COVID guidelines. If you are still unsure and wish to update your website or your social media, but feel like staying in the safeness of your home, then you may still consider a virtual shoot.

By researching the option of a virtual shoot, I asked a fellow photographer who I follow and who has used this process for her own virtual shoots

Aga Mortlock is a professional photographer based in Hale and she specialises in brand photography, here is a quote on her thoughts on virtual photograph sessions.

After talking to Aga about virtual shoots and my own practice/research. I have found an app that photographers use to direct a client during a virtual shoot and this uses the client’s phone to capture the photographs, this is called ShutterApp. To use this process, the app will need to be downloaded by both the photographer and the client.

Keep reading & learn about this process:

1. Download app

2. Share your ID with the photographer

3. Photographers will open up the shutter app page on their laptop

ONCE YOU HAVE BOOKED YOUR VIRTUAL SHOOT & DOWNLOADED THE APP, HERE IS THE NEXT STAGE

After reading the first part of the blog the process of a virtual shoot sounds really simple and you would be correct in the downloadable app and then use your phone to capture your images.

Let me tell you that this is not as easy as it seems as every photo shoot needs planning and preparation.

You need to consider how you may pose, props to use, outfits, lighting & customers’ environment. When planning a shoot on a 1:1 basis, all of these aspects are considered by the photographer during your 1:1 with them, before the planned shoot.

LET’S BREAK THIS DOWN

HOW SHOULD YOU POSE?

Posing relates to your facial expression and your position of yourself, so take a look through these key tips to consider -

1. Pose the hair.

2. Pull the chin (or Ears) forward.

3. Lift the arm.

4. Leave visual space by the waist.

5. Turn the shoulders.

6. Don't show the whites of the eyes.

7. Don't let the nose break the face.

It’s great for you to have an idea about how to pose, some people have their best side, that like to photograph. Even though the photographer is not in front of you, they will direct you on how you pose correctly towards the angle on the phone, as they will be able to see each picture before it is taken. This is a great opportunity to learn the best ways to communicate with your photographer, while still laughing and smiling.

REMEMBER ITS FUN!

WHAT SHOULD I WEAR & DO I NEED PROPS?

Let’s consider the use of key props & outfits that represent your personality, company and brand. This will be different per person and as you are using these to show or send a message, these will be symbolic within the picture. So to help you to consider this, think out how you wish to be portrayed, within your clothing selection and make sure that what you wear stands out from the background.

READ MORE, click below

The last two options to consider are the lighting & environment of your location.

When on a 1:1 shoot, a photographer will be able to offer extra lighting in the form of studio lighting or flash. So for this shoot, the lighting option will be natural lighting, via a window, outside or ambient lighting. This setup will be different per person, house, lighting and time of day, but as we are using our phones the phone sensor will indicate the best lighting/exposure point, per picture taken.

You may wonder, what I mean when I refer to the phone setting the exposure, here are a set of images and all I have done is move the small yellow square as I took each photo. The yellow square will set the exposure per picture and the focus.

I hope that these visuals help you understand how to control exposure when taking any type of picture with your mobile phone.

Now that the planning has been organised between client and photographer, how will a virtual photoshop work?

Here is a video clip from a virtual shoot that I did to practice and experiment with ShutterApp. My client had her phone and I would recommend that the client has a mobile phone tripod during this type of shoot.

When you watch this short clip, you can see that I am directing the model to re-pose as I take each picture. On the Shutterapp screen, as the photographer I can see the phone the client is using, and its battery life and I have full control over where to position the focus/exposure square, which I have mentioned above when discussing lighting and exposure. During the session, I have the option to change the settings further by controlling the focal length per image. This can be changed to square, telephoto or wide-angle. This simply means that I can take either a closer view or a further away view. One of the last options that can be changed while the client re-positions or uses different light sources is the power to either deliberately over or underexpose each picture by using the Manual EV option.

After the shoot is over, What happens next?

The photographer can edit by downloading the images and using either Lightroom or Photoshop. The Shutterapp application offers the option to edit through this app and you have the option to re-upload the edited images to your client. The positive aspect of the app is that you have a really easy way to send over or share during the session set images, taken via this shooting technique. You can guarantee a fast turnaround for your images so that you can use the final images for web and social media. One negative is the quality of the images is low quality, due to being in the format of a JPEG, which means a limit to editing and size, but are perfect for social media and small images on your website.

When you would have a photoshoot without this technique and the photographer would work in a RAW format which is a large format and the file size is larger. This brings excellent quality to editing and printing large format displays or images.

Remember this key tip, you damage the quality of an image if you attempt to make it larger than the size format it has been saved in. I am sure that we have all heard of pixelated images.

See an example of the effects of pixels to the left

During this blog on virtual shoots, I have covered the entire process used for this shoot and any other type of headshot or personal brand shot. Take a read as I have touched on a fair few subjects, that as a photographer I understand and are clear to me, with the knowledge that I have. If you have any questions on this or would like to know more then please leave a comment below or email me directly.

Or if you would like to learn more about photography, then keep reading.

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