Paulo Jordao Photography - BLOG

Holiday Portraits - How to take great pictures.

Let me start explaining that for me, photography is the art of capturing a special moment (digital or film). Anybody can take a picture but not every person taking pictures is a Photographer, and there is a difference between a picture from an average person with a average camera and a picture taken from a good professional photographer with a good camera, lens, lighting, props, etc.

Here are few sugestions to make a nice Holiday Portrait;

- Who is your subject?

First decide if you are shooting only one person or the whole family. This will help you to descide about your composition and how to set your camera (if you’re using a DSLR camera)

- What do you have as your background and what props will you use?

Sometimes you just need a good idea to make a great picture, other times you will need backdrop, pine tree, sled, fake snow, etc.

- What kind of light?

Here is what makes the difference between an average picture and a professional one. You need to decide if you’re using window light and reflectors, strobes, or continuous lighting. This year I’ve been trying to use only my new set of 4 continuous lighting (3,000 watts).

Here are some samples of my Holiday Portrait

School Portraits - Holiday Portraits - Tips and Suggestions

This week I was shooting some Holiday Portraits for one school here in my city. I love to shoot kids Portraits in my home-studio, but it can be very challenging when you have to do it in a school.

Here are some tips and sugestions to help you with your next school portrait session:

Time: Remember schedule your day with some extra time, you’re not shooting only one or two portraits. I might have dozens, if not hundreds of students on that school.

Bring your background and Studio Lights - I don’t like the idea of having to pack my strobes, soft boxes, backgrounds and etc. It takes time pack it from your studio, set up at the school, pack at the school and set up back in your studio. But if you are concerned with the quality of your work, that is what you should do.

Assistants: You should bring at least one or two assistants to help you with setting up your equipment, organizing the students and going over each student package and order.

What lights to Bring:Last year I brought three strobes from my home-studio 1- main light, 2- Fill, 3- hair light (notice that I chose not use a background light - I wanted something a little different from past years). The images came out amazing, but I remember how challenging it was to keep the students focused in looking to my camera instead of pay attention on my strobes every time they’ve fired.

This year I brought four kits of my continuous fluorescent lighting and it made a huge difference. I could use an aperture of 4.0 to blur more my background.

Here are some samples of this year Holiday School Portraits

What do you think?

Here is an update from my last post.

As I mentioned earlier, this was one of the most beautiful event of the year. They didn’t have only Seven (7) new amazing inductees, but few of the most beautiful and successful people of Florida were there to make the night even more special.

Here is one of the highlights of the night, when the inductee John Vanbiesbrouck make an emotional speech recognizing his mom for all her sacrifices and encouragement.

Anyway, if you want to check all the images from that special day, please CLICK HERE.

You can also leave a comment.

Thanks

Sports Hall of Fame - Class of 2010.

This week, I had the honor to photograph another amazing event - Sports Hall of Fame (class of 2010).

The event was a success with 7 new inductees and a lot of past inductees.

I am still working on the pictures, but if you want to be notified whenever the images are online, CLICK HERE and we will send you an email as soon as the images get online. If you register before the images get online, you will also get a $5.00 credit to buy any photo there.

I will update this post in one or two days with some extra images.

Thanks.

Paulo Jordao