Family Portrait Shoot - Tony Cobley

Sunday 25th Of March I went on a family portrait shoot with Tony Cobley as an assistant. This is not something than Tony does often, but advertises them as part of his commercial work and he often sells vouchers during the Christmas period, for these type of shoots. I was extremely excited to go along for this as portraiture is something that I am extremely interested in. Tony explained to me that these type of shoots were extremely rare as many people do prefer to go to a professional studio for photographs as it is less stressful for them and often has a lot more space. The shoot was to take place in the family home of the people we were going to photograph. Tony talked a lot of the way to the location about what was to be expected, which made me feel reassured. He said he aimed to get the typical family shots out the way quickly as this is what everyone wants during these kinds of shoots. He said he would be asking the family what they would be after so that he can make sure he gives them what they want but also he would try and shoot artistic, contemporary shots for the family to look at. On arrival, we met the family and began to set up the studio in the living room. We used a four light set up with a professional white paper backdrop - Tony stated that this was his typical set up for these kind of shoots and also for his portrait work (mostly for professional business portraits), as it keeps the background pristine white without shadow and also hides marks. Tony had pre-set lighting measurements that he usually starts with as it saves time, which I thought was a brilliant idea! After a few test shots of me, Tony was ready to go! It took approximately 1hour to unpack the car and set up the studio, which I thought was reasonable considering there was so much to do. We had given the family paperwork to look over as we set up, which provided them with prices of prints & frames etc. These were all extremely professional looking and I noticed Tony had also snuck his business card in there!

We were photographing two parents & two small children. Because we were photographing children, Tony warmed them up to being photographed by asking them to join in with test shoots and seeing what faces they could pull. By using this as a game they really began to enjoy being photographed, which showed in the photographs. The parents then joined in and we achieved some nice group family shots. I occasionally had to alter lights and sweep the backdrop as dirt got onto the floor. Once the children started to get bored with the games, Tony encouraged them to bring toys into the shots and pose with them, which kept the games going! The youngest boy, got bored extremely quickly so we left him to play with his toys and calm down as he was getting a little stroppy and decided to photograph the parents as they wanted photographs in their skiing gear. They also wanted photographs with their dogs, which proved tricky as the dogs didn't want to sit still, but we tried a couple of times and managed to get a couple of shots with both dogs and both children in.

After the shoot Tony did a quick edit of pictures, cutting out all of the photographs that were blurred, had people blinking in etc and then uploaded all of the photographs to his laptop. He then put the photographs into lightroom and showed them how to make a short list of their favourites. Whilst they looked through the images, we proceeded to take down the studio.

The family had been given a £200 voucher, the shoot was £100 so this left them £100 for prints and/or canvases. Tony talked to them about the prices and what they were looking for. This took a long time as they were extremely indecisive, but Tony explained that this was typical of this kind of shoot as he didn't typically give people the contact sheet, but on this occasion as they were placing a pretty large order that he would send them low resolution copies with his watermark on, for them to choose from and that he would do them a deal once they had selected what they wanted.

Here are some of the images of the day:

I really really enjoyed the day and I felt I was apart of this family afterwards, they were extremely welcoming and friendly. This is the type of business I would be interested to starting. The day was extremely tiring and despite allocating three hours for everything we easily spent an hour to an hour and a half over, as the family were so nice and we spent extra time talking through potential packages that they could have.