My First Real Studio Shoot!

Hello Everyone!

Today I wanted to share with you all the process and results of my first ever time doing a shoot from scratch in a proper photography studio! Before now, I’ve just been using my pop up background at home and the natural light coming through my back door, but going to college has opened up a whole lot of opportunities for me and allowed me to use their equipment, which is so much fancier than mine. I still have a whole lot to learn when it comes to using the studio (I’m especially bad at attaching soft boxes to the lights!), but I’m excited to learn and proud of the images I was able to create!

I’ve spent years jotting down and moodboarding ideas in my journal for shoots I wanted to do, but I was never able to because they required models, studio lighting or other equipment that I just didn’t have and it has been so frustrating having to wait to see my ideas come into fruition, but I’ve finally got there! I can’t wait to do more shoots and make more of my ideas come to life! For now though I wanted to share the process of my first ever studio photoshoot:

Planning/Moodboarding

I always start planning by making a moodboard. I find it’s the best way to get all of my ideas down and make sure that when I come back to it later I’ll still know exactly what I was going for. Moodboards allow me to create a general aesthetic for the shoot and then there is space to jot down lighting techniques, props and other such details around the pictures as well! They are also just incredibly fun to make and gives me journals full of idea moodboards to look back on. Here are the 3 moodboards I made for this shoot:

I had to produce 2 head and shoulders portraits out of this shoot and one of them had to be edited in the style of a magazine cover, which is why i did a separate moodboard for magazines to see which layout I liked the best. The other two are for the two very different shoots I was doing. The first one was for the magazine cover and was going to be colourful, eccentric and fun and the other I was planning on making a little collection of simpler black and white, photobooth style photos.

I won’t bore you with the technical aspects of lighting and equipment here, but if you want me to do a separate post about my college studio set up, then I can for those of you interested!

And here is how they turned out:

I’m super happy with these images and I had so much fun planning, shooting and editing them! I’m going to see if I can get in the studio again soon to do a few more shoots to build my portfolio, but for now, if you want to see more of my work, then you can check out the Portfolio page right here on my blog or go check out my Instagram: @thephotographydragon

Do you have any creative projects on the go right now? How are you getting along with them?

Goodbye for now!

Over and Out