Best way to start up as a portrait photographer
Starting out as a portrait photographer can be daunting. Photographing your family and friends can only take you so far because eventually you’ll run out of people to photograph and probably pretty quickly, also people are pretty busy so bringing them out on multiple shoots can be difficult. You can always try to be a photographer assistant but how hard can that be especially a popular photographer that has a lot of people on the waiting list that want to work with them.
The big question is, how do I find people to shoot? What I found to be the best, quickest and most direct way, which also happens to be the most never racking way as well, we’ve all seen this method on social media at this point so you probably already know, which is, approaching cool looking people on the street and asking to photograph them.
Fortunately there’s a ton of people on TikTok and Instagram that are already doing this so it can help with your confidence and approach to see other people doing it, and once you get past the fear of approaching a stranger, which won’t take long, it becomes really fun.
Now, How would I go about it? Well first, I would go out looking presentable, for example a black or white tee shirt, dark blue slim jeans and some trainers (classic photographer fit). Go to a popular place that has a lot of traffic as this will be your best bet to find cool and interesting people to photograph and find many of these people in a short time and small area such as your city centre. Wait for someone who looks like they’re ready for a photograph, and by that, I mean flamboyant clothing or someone who looks like they are into their fashion and approach them with a smile and compliment them on their appearance to break the ice and politely ask them if they have a minute for you to photograph them for your project that you are posting on Instagram of photographing cool looking strangers on the street, of course it’s best to put it in your own way.
Do this and in no time you will have a lot of work under yourself and have photographed many different people from different backgrounds and would have developed skills in portraits and headshots within a short time frame that you can use to propel you into organising shoots yourself and getting work!
Here is some resources to help yourself get started: https://www.format.com/online-portfolio-website/portrait-photography/guide
