Portraits
Planning a Formal Portrait Session That Doesn't Feel Stiff
Formal portraits get a bad reputation for feeling stiff, but the stiffness usually comes from a lack of structure, not too much of it. A well-planned formal portrait session actually moves faster and feels looser than one made up as it goes.
Structure Helps More Than It Hurts
Before a session, we build a rough order — who's being photographed, in what groupings, roughly how long each will take. Having that plan doesn't make the session feel rigid to the people in front of the camera; it means we're not standing around figuring out logistics while everyone waits, which is what actually makes a session feel long and stiff.
Keeping Energy Up Through a Long List
We mix up energy deliberately through a long session — a few quieter, posed frames followed by something looser, a joke, a request to move rather than hold still. Nobody stays photogenic through forty-five straight minutes of the same instruction, so we don't ask them to.
By the time we get to the last few combinations on the list, people are usually more relaxed than they were at the start — which is exactly the opposite of what most people expect from formal portraits.
