Perfecting their portraits and processing skills is what 8 budding students had in mind for this beautiful Saturday in November.

DeAnna and myself met up with these 8 awesome students at the Aperture Academy studio. After we all got acquainted I went over the foundational skills of both the technical and the creative aspects of photography. Learning photography is a great way to exercise both sides of our brain. Understanding how to attain the proper camera settings, while creatively posing our subjects, with the objective of capturing fantastic images. This is a craft that takes continual practice.

Today we had 2 outstanding models, Brian and Paige are a beautiful young couple. They are vibrant and attractive, which made our jobs a little easier.

We bagan shooting indoors, without a flash, but rather utilizing the natural light provided by the large windows. I place our models in front of the large windows and we began cycling everyone through. As the students started capturing some images, DeAnna and I would offer feedback and send them back to take more. We also worked with some christmas lights to demonstrate some different creative way to use holiday elements in portraits.

The morning was really flying by and we hadn't even gone outside yet. For the remainder of our shooting portion we took the students to a nice grey wall in the business section of the Pruneyard. when we can keep the background simple, our models become the stars that they should be. Once again we used some holiday props for our outdoor shoot. Both Brian and Paige had a lot of fun playing with the little "naughty" and "nice" signage. The students were really capturing some stellar images, those worthy of a paid portrait session.

We were all getting a bit hungry, so I sent the students off to get some lunch, while DeAnna and I downloaded all their images onto our iMac workstations.

The last portion of class I went over how to process the morning sessions images. We went over the basic panel adjustments in Adobe Lightroom, as well as the subtle yet important adjustment brush. With the adjustment brush we brightened eyes and whitened teeth. Just the slightest of adjustments make a big difference in the overall image quality.

It seems like our class had only just started and it was already coming to a close. Time truly does fly when you;re having fun. As I went around and shutdown all the computer workstations, I was so happy to see all the awesome images that the students captured. Productive students make for a happy teacher!

Until next time,
Ellie, DeAnna the rest of the Aperture Academy team!

If you'd like to join us at one of our workshops, you can find the schedule/sign up here.