The Mastering Portrait Photography Podcast

Embracing Positivity on a Challenging Day: Insights from the Mastering Portrait Photography Podcast

It's Friday the 13th, a day often associated with superstition, but instead of dwelling on the negatives, let's focus on the positives that have brought joy over the past week. In this episode, I share my experiences, from the challenges of a busy schedule to the joy of working with families in the studio. Join me as I reflect on the importance of community and giving back to the photography industry.

Getting stuff off my chest:
- The significance of staying positive amidst challenges
- Insights from recent judging experiences at photography competitions
- The importance of community support and paying it forward in the photography industry
- Tips for preparing your prints for competitions and avoiding common mistakes
- Updates on upcoming workshops and events in portrait photography

Join me as I delve into these topics and more, encouraging you to embrace the joy of photography and the connections we build along the way. Read on or listen to the episode for a dose of inspiration!

 

Transcript
Friday the 13th Reflections
It's Friday the 13th of February, and while I might be tempted to think twice about recording a podcast today, I choose to focus on the positives. It has been one of those weeks where many little things have driven me to distraction. Sarah's car needed a new wheel bearing, and I had a video recorder malfunction. You know how it is—those little annoyances can really pile up. However, I want to concentrate on everything that has made me smile this week and the joy we've experienced over the past couple of weeks.

I'm Paul, and this is the Mastering Portrait Photography podcast.

Please bear with me; I have a cough that lingers from a cold. The team in the office thinks it started back in November. I rarely get colds, but this season has been different. Even after receiving the flu jab, I've caught colds just far enough apart that I think I'm getting better, yet close enough that the cough remains. But in a few weeks, Sarah and I will be off on our travels again, working around the world with Crystal Cruises, so I know this will sort itself out.

 

Recent Updates
As usual, I want to share a little update on where we are. I often wonder why I do this, but perhaps it's cathartic. You'll notice there's no video this time. I tried recording a video for the last episode, but Katie only watched a couple of minutes before suggesting that unless I tidied my desk and did it properly, it probably wouldn't look right.

The podcast is something I enjoy doing whenever I find a moment. It provides a chance to share information and reflect on the business we run, the photography we create, and the clients we celebrate. Each time I do this, I feel better about my work.

I've had to admit defeat, at least for now, on the video podcast front. Most of the feedback I receive is from people who listen while editing or commuting, so I've decided to return to audio. It was a one-time trial, and I didn't try very hard. I recorded one video, and it didn't turn out well, so I've chosen to stick with what I love most: simply chatting.

 

Busy Diary
The past couple of weeks have been busy, but not necessarily with fee-paying work. For those just starting out, I remember looking forward to all the opportunities I now have, such as judging, mentoring, and creating content. I love it all, but ultimately, the core of our business is with our clients. Tomorrow, I have a full day scheduled with families in the studio, and I'm really excited about that.

It has rained incessantly, but the weather forecast for tomorrow predicts a clear and cold Valentine's Day. I hope we can take some photographs outside, which would be wonderful. We've had many headshot shoots recently, which are less affected by the weather since we can find shelter when photographing one person. Most clients looking for personal branding prefer studio-based sessions, so that's manageable. However, with families, we want to get outside, even if it's cold.

 

Judging Experience
In the past week, Sarah and I chaired the UK PPA print competition at the Guild's photo hub, which was an incredible experience. Thank you to everyone who participated; it was truly amazing. While we don't get paid for judging, it is a wonderful opportunity. Sarah organized everything and ensured it ran smoothly, while I served as the voice of the judging panel.

The judging process was fantastic. I want to express my gratitude to the judges who participated. It was an honor to sit among such talented photographers. The audience was the most engaged I've ever experienced, asking questions and quizzing us. This interaction made the judging process more enjoyable and valuable for everyone involved.

Typically, judging is done in silence to maintain focus, but this can sometimes feel isolating. We need to concentrate, but we also want to engage with the audience. If we can make the process interesting and entertaining, more photographers will stay until the end, which benefits everyone.

A good judging team is essential. If judges feel comfortable with one another, they can cooperate, challenge each other, and support one another. This camaraderie leads to better outcomes and more considered scores. Each judge brings their unique perspective, whether it’s technical details, emotional connections, or composition. This diversity enriches the judging process.

 

Print Quality Insights
During the judging, I noticed some common issues with print quality. For instance, we saw several prints with color banding. While we couldn't determine if the banding originated in the file, it was evident in the prints. If you're overlaying textures, ensure they only cover the intended areas. Some images had overlays that unintentionally covered the subjects, which detracted from the overall effect.

When entering print competitions, pay attention to the mount size and ensure your prints meet the minimum requirements. The combination of your mount and print is what we judge, so it's crucial to have a cohesive look. If you're using an inset mount, make sure the paper and mount colors match to avoid any jarring contrasts.

We also discussed the terminology we use, such as referring to creators as "authors" rather than just photographers. This term encompasses a broader range of creators, including illustrators and fine artists, and acknowledges their contributions.

 

Paying It Forward
An email I received recently from a student sparked a reflection on the importance of paying it forward in our industry. He reached out with several questions about our business, and while I took a while to respond, his reply highlighted a concerning trend. He mentioned that many photographers either didn't respond or were rude in their replies.

This saddened me. We often speak about the camaraderie and relationships in our industry, but it seems that the spirit of helping one another may be waning. Many of us have benefited from the kindness of others, and it's essential that we continue this tradition.

I believe it's our responsibility to give back, whether through mentoring, judging, or sharing knowledge. The joy of watching someone else flourish because you've offered a helping hand can be incredibly rewarding.

 

Upcoming Workshops
As we wrap up, I want to mention a couple of upcoming workshops. Our Bootcamp on the 11th and 12th of May has one space left. It was a fantastic experience last year, and we’re excited to run it again. We also have one space left for our Advanced Studio Lighting workshop on the 16th of March, which is one of my favorite workshops to run.

If you're interested in either of these, please visit masteringportraitphotography.com for more details.

Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe on your preferred platform and consider leaving a review on iTunes. Your support helps others find the podcast and grow our community.

As we head into Valentine's weekend, remember to be kind to yourself and to those you love. Take care.

I’m back after a bit of a stop-start spell with the podcast, and I’m talking honestly about headspace, mojo, and how hard it can be to create when you’re just not feeling it. The main point I wanted to cover is this: there’s more than one way to do things in photography, and the “that’s wrong” comments (especially online) completely miss the point. I’m sharing why I try to frame everything as my way, not the way, and how clients, time, kit, and real-world constraints always shape what works.

I also give you a quick update on upcoming workshops, where to find the new short-form video content, and what I’ll be covering next after a couple of judging days.

Key links

Mastering Portrait Photography

Our Reels & Shorts

Mastering Portrait Photography on YouTube

Workshops mentioned

Mastering Dogs With Their Owners workshop (9 Feb 2026)

Mastering Advanced Studio Lighting (16 Mar 2026)

Mastering Portrait Photography Bootcamp (11–12 May 2026)

Transcript
[00:00:00] So hello one and all. This is the Mastering Portrait Photography podcast, which hasn't, hasn't been the most frequent in the past few months, one reason or another. Um, I just haven't managed to find either the time or if I'm more honest, I guess the headspace, the difficulty with doing anything creative is that if you don't feel it, if you're not right into it, and you know this as photographers, it's really hard to do it. And every time I've sat down, it's just been incredibly difficult to find, I suppose the words, I'm not sure that last year was the greatest year on earth. We got there, we grafted, but we got there, um, massively busy year, but I don't know if the positivity that we've had over the past years was quite, quite the same.

And so in that context, it's been quite hard, I think. To, uh, be a photographer, to be a portrait [00:01:00] photographer, and also to record this podcast. So when I talk to people and they say they're not feeling it, I totally understand. Somebody in a workshop the other day, we always, at the beginning of every workshop we run here, we ask the people on it what they'd like to get out of it.

And I think on every single one last year, and certainly the one we ran a couple of weeks ago, there is someone who will simply say. I've lost my mojo. What an interesting line given I think I've been feeling the same way about the podcast. Not that I haven't wanted to do it. I love doing it. I love sitting here and chatting.

It's sort of like having my own personal counselor, you, but I just haven't really found the energy and the headspace, um, to do it. And for a million reasons, some of it to do with just the mood, the news. Politics, the weather. Um, and then just to compound everything over Christmas, I completely lost my voice [00:02:00] and I do mean, completely caused a lot of hilarity amongst my family and my team.

But I had to do a couple of workshops at the convention. And they were quite squeaky. I literally sounded like squeaky from the toy story. Anyway, you'd be pleased to hear it's all back. It's all firing on all cylinders. 2026 is a new year. I'd like to say it's the start of a new year, but given it's February, I'm not even certain.

I can say Happy New Year to all of you, but here we are. I'm Paul, and this is the return of the Mastering Portrait Photography podcast.

So, hello one and all. I hope you're well. I hope the weather, I dunno what the weather's like all around the world. Of course I don't. But right here, right now in this bit of the world, it is miserable. We had to drive a Land Rover over to get, um, to. I think it's called an eyebrow repaired an odd, an odd phrase, but it's the bit of the wing that pro [00:03:00] protrudes over the wheel on the front, front driver's side.

Because the other day as I was about to head out and do a job for the hearing dogs and with my client, my client's climbing into the car next to me and somebody decided the gap between my front driver's side wing and the wall next to him was sufficient to get a very big Mercedes-Benz through it. It turns out it wasn't.

And the only damage, sadly for me was that it put a, put a hole in the, uh, wheel arch. It's called an eyebrow, this thing. So anyway, today we must have, find someone to get it repaired. The guy's paid, it's fine. It'll all get fixed. Um, so, uh, drove over, but the weather. The weather was horrific, and it's cold and it's gray and there's just water everywhere.

It's a miserable state of affairs and trying to, trying to be a portrait photographer in this. I'm glad we have a warm studio that I will say. Uh, so here we are. [00:04:00] Here we are. It is, what time is it? It's, uh, 10 past eight on a Tuesday evening. I'm still in the studio and this time. I am recording video for it Now.

I don't know whether you'll see the video. This is the first time I've tried to do, what do they call it, A visualized podcast? I'm not sure. It's a video podcast. That would be, um, over egging it a little bit. It's me staring at one very small camera that I dug outta a drawer. To see if I can get this to work.

If it works, then we'll throw something a little bit more sophisticated at it. But in our team at the moment, in the mastering portrait photography team, we have Katie, I've introduced you to Katie before. That's not news. But one of the things we have been doing is recording more and more and more and more content, mostly short reels, short videos of one sort or another.

And it's, I mean, it's a huge amount of fun. I'm having a blast. I come in on a Monday and Katie will tell me the topics we're going to cover, uh, and we get on with it and we film small [00:05:00] videos of one form or another. Um, and it's, I'll be honest, I'm loving it because it gets, it gives us a chance to talk about this business die love.

Um, however, some of the things that have popped up through that are that really the podcast also now needs to be on video. Here I am and if you take a look around me, if you are looking at this on the video and take a look around me, you can see that it's the first foray. 'cause even if, as I look around the screen here that I'm, I've got feeding information back to me, it does look like my desk has been burgled.

It is pretty bad at the moment. There is stuff everywhere. Uh, which isn't great, but I will get that fixed and get it sorted. So it looks a little bit prettier. I'm not sure this is the right camera, uh, for this particular job, but, uh, if it works, like I said, we might just upgrade. Um, but off the back of these videos, this is the topic I wanted to talk about today.

This is only gonna be a short podcast, uh, partly 'cause I am starving. I've been here all [00:06:00] day. I've had one banana, one sandwich, one pair. Um, and I really, really, really want to go and do a little bit of exercise, um, and maybe have some food. So this is gonna be a shorter podcast than perhaps you're used to.

However, this is what I wanted to cover. I wanted to sort of cover a point that has arisen through doing these little reels and videos with Katie that there is definitely more than one way of doing things. Now I'm doing this unscripted. I've got my pen to make some notes in case I kind of lose track. Um, so forgive me if I ramble, but.

There's more than one way of doing things in. When we do a workshop or I do a presentation, I will always, or nearly always put up a slide that simply has two words, opinion overload, and I put it up there to remind me, to remind the people watching me that just because I say this is a way of doing [00:07:00] it doesn't mean it's the.

Way of doing it. It's just the way that I found works for me on the whole, sometimes it'll be two or three different ways I've discovered will work and I'll point out which one seems to give me the most consistent results, or is the least expensive in time and materials, or is just simply the, you know, the one I enjoy the most.

Because if you, if you are attending workshops, if you are going through the process of learning, and we all do this every time the person in front of you says, this is how to do it, there's a tendency for us to believe them. There's a tendency for us to, in our head say, right, that's what we're gonna do.

Their photography is what I like. That's how we're gonna do it. And that can't possibly. Be the case. There are too many different styles, too many different photographers for that to be the case, and so I try to remind people, this is just my opinion at this [00:08:00] moment in time. This is how I do it, or this is how I have done it tomorrow.

It may well be different next year. It's highly likely to be different changes in technology. In equipment, in approaches in clients, your client drives an awful lot of this too. Remember, you know, if your client's demanding that you travel light, then you travel light. And so some of the techniques for lighting, for instance, won't be, uh, quite the same as if you have all the time in the world and a studio.

There's always a way of doing something that works for you, and there are plenty of other ways that maybe don't work so well. And the point is, we've learned this through the reels and videos that we've been posting, but all too often I'll put something up and somebody will tell me quite, quite vigorously, that's not right.

Whether it's clamshell, just use a reflector. You don't need two lights, whether it's white balance adjustments, differential white balance. I'll just do it all in night room in post, whether it's, and my favorite comment was, [00:09:00] you are three times my age. Maybe that's right for you, which I thought was entertaining, if nothing else, and these are all valid by the way, I'm not worried about it. It just struck me that people seem to think that there is just one way of doing something. And of course there isn't, there's not one technique, there's not one aesthetic. If, if we all liked the same thing, if we all liked the same output, if we all liked the same processes, life would be, frankly, frigging dull because there'd be nothing interesting every, and I use the musician, I know I use the musician musician's analogy a lot, but if you think about the number of different ways that you've heard a composer or different composers say they write music, some will sit at a piano, some will write the lyrics, some will hum it, some will record it.

Some people just have their phone to their bed and record a quick snippet of vocal or whatever it might [00:10:00] be. Everyone has a different way of doing it, and yet no one seemingly anyway, no one in that world criticizes another songwriter and tells them that that's how they should do it. They should do it differently, but somehow in photography, that's okay.

Or maybe it's not that it's in photography. Maybe it's just that the medium of imagery, the medium video, lends itself to social media, in which case it lends itself to people writing comments. And so I just thought I'd explain whenever I go through something. I mean, I'd love you to have a look at some of the reels and things we're posting.

I'll, I'll give you the details of where they can be found at the end, um, and see what you think. But I try really hard. To make it an open conversation. It's about, here's a way of doing it. Here's an explanation of what's going on. Here's why I like it. I mean, I think that's fair. It doesn't mean I don't have things that I like, but I do try really hard not to say this is a defacto [00:11:00] thing.

Technique, method route. You shouldn't, you don't have to have this equipment, you don't have to have, um, this way of doing things, you know, light meters. Another one, people are very enthusiastic about light meters, tripods, gotta have a tripod, gotta have a light meter. Um, two things that actually, I, I own plenty of them.

Um, just doesn't work particularly, or it does work for me. Of course it works and that's wrong. Saying it doesn't work for me, that's not true. It's just that not using a tripod and not using a light light meter works better for me in most circumstances. There are days when actually a tripod is really useful.

Long exposures stop frames when I just want that pin sharp thing you can get when your camera is bolted to a good sturdy tripod or a light meter. When I'm running lots of different light sources and I just need to run around the room, checking that everything's balanced. Yeah, line meter is brilliant for that.[00:12:00] 

But most of the time I just like the freedom. I like the pace, I like the fluidity of working without either of those things. Am I wrong? Well, to some people, clearly, but it doesn't feel wrong to me. It feels totally right to me. Do I think that people that use a tripod or like me are wrong? No, not at all.

Um, I can give you my reasons why. I find it easier without, I find the speed of it without, I find the availability and the fact that I can just drag a camera out and get on with it. I find that appealing, and so my point is that as fast as I'm trying really hard to provide information, provide insight into one photographer's way of doing things.

I think it's important to note that there's always more ways, um, of achieving an end result. Um, and I will try in the videos, actually, I'm gonna try in the coming months to do things in different ways. Things that I maybe I wouldn't normally do to illustrate my own point. Maybe [00:13:00] I will use a tripod to nail the sharpness.

Maybe I will use a light meter. Um, to show how that works. Maybe I will just do, I'll listen to the comments coming back and I will try some of these routes. Maybe I'll do differential white balance in Lightroom and Photoshop rather than using actual lights. And all of these things are doable and it'll be a huge amount of fun, actually.

'cause I love, I love the idea that there's a million ways of, um, creating things because the more ways you learn, the more holes you can get out of. And we've all been there, right? We've all been in a shoot. Where chaos ensues or there's no time, or the weather doesn't play ball or the client or the location, or it doesn't matter, whatever it is, that just is causing you a headache.

And so the more techniques you have at your fingertips, the better. And that's if there is one way of doing things. If there is a case where there's one way of doing it, there's the one thing I would say you should definitely do is learn lots of different ways [00:14:00] to do things. So I will try. Um, on that note, I said this is gonna be a short podcast.

It just occurred to me today that I would have a quick, um, chat about that and also test whether doing this straight to video is gonna work, in which case we can move to some, uh, maybe some longer topics and some interviews. Uh, so some updates on where we are with everything else. It has been a busy start to the year.

Lots of different things going on. Uh, workshops. Sarah's asked me to mention the workshops that we have, uh, in the diary at the moment. So I've got one next Monday actually, where we have a space left. It's dogs and their owners, I should say, photographing dogs and their owners. Uh, which is all about it's dog photography, but because I'm a portrait photographer, it's as important to me that we photograph the dogs with the people that bring them, their owners, their loved ones, all those kinds of things.

Um, and so it's a day's workshop, uh, February the ninth, um, here at our studio, uh, on March the [00:15:00] 16th. And this might. Be my favorite single workshop to run. It's Advanced Studio Lighting and I love it because people just rock up with ideas and we play, we play all day. Uh, the one we did a couple weeks ago was off-camera flash, and that was a huge amount of fun too because people just ask us to try things.

And I love that. I love the idea that, um, we have a maximum of five delegates on these workshops, and that's deliberate. It gives us a chance to chat. It, it gives us a chance to talk our way through things. Uh, so the off-camera flash, uh, day was just brilliant. And the advanced Studio lighting, which is on March the 16th, um, is fun.

Uh, for the same kinds of reasons, five people and me and a model or two just playing, just trying stuff and seeing what happens based on experience. And for me as a, um, as the person running the workshop. I love it when people come with ideas too, because. Quite often it pushes what we do here [00:16:00] at the studio a little bit further.

We try new things and it's great. And I mean, the other thing of course is I'm an crom ambassador, so I get to play with all of this kit, um, that I so love using. So that's March the 16th. Now, may the 11th and May the 12th. This is a two day bootcamp. Uh, there's a space, I think there's one space left. Um, we didn't know last year when we ran the first one quite what this would be like.

Um, we had to change tack a little bit, so we had a hall booked. Um, rather than do it here at our studio, uh, we had a hall booked at, um, a local hall. Um, and for one reason or another on the day before the bootcamp workshop, it just wasn't gonna happen for a million reasons at their end, not ours. And, and it just.

We decided in the end to sidestep it and run everything here. We reworked the studio, we changed the way we were gonna do things literally overnight. We're not, I'm not joking now, that's overnight. [00:17:00] Um, and it worked really well because everything's to hand. So anything that someone asks, we can try again.

Very limited number of people. Um, so it's not too busy. And that's a two day bootcamp. Um, and the other thing we did is at the end of the first day, we said if anyone fan sticking around in the evening and having a pizza and, and a beer, then you're very welcome to. It wasn't really part of the planned workshop as such.

It was just rather than everyone scattering to their bread and breakfasts and hotels and things. Why don't, if you want to, why didn't stick around? Everybody stuck around. Um, and so actually we dragged lights out into the garden. We did different things. We tried different things. We had really nice food and a beer and laughed away, uh, into the we hours.

It was brilliant and picked up the next day. So March, uh, sorry, may the 11th, may the 12th, two day boot camp. If you fancy it. Um, so those are the things. What have I got left for this week? Oh, right. I said, I'd say where the reels and things are. So we are publishing reels at the moment. Lots of short snippets alongside our long form stuff on, uh, you can head to [00:18:00] YouTube.

Instagram is mastering portrait photography. That's um. Our ID for that. Um, and TikTok as well. Um, TikTok is a whole new thing, uh, for us. I feel about four times the age of the people on there. Uh, but Katie, who's in charge of all the seeing, who's, uh, much younger than us, um, assures us it's a good idea. So we're also putting content up onto there and get some really interesting conversations.

Um, we're also putting all of those reels up on our mastering portrait photography.com website in a reel section. Um, still uploading those, still tuning them. So if you want to go to a single place. Uh, if you are not a social media freak, um, you can go up there and all of the little short reels will be on there with various links out to long form, uh, content that you have to be a member for, for the long form.

But the reels, the short form, uh, will be on there. Uh, what else, latest? Oh, this week is judging. Um, I do, I think I'm due to give a quick update [00:19:00] on the judging I did at The Convention in London. As ever, when I do a judging. Um, a whole process of judging or a couple of days of judging. I normally come back with some things I've learned, but this time, because I'm going into The Guild judging, I'm chairing the guild judging, I thought I'd combine the two and go through my notes from.

Both sessions. Uh, to be honest, I'm beginning to sound like a broken record. It's the same things you know. Don't blow your highlights. Don't block your blacks. Clean your sensor. Learn how to print. And for goodness sake, mount your finished work beautifully because it counts. If it's a print competition, make sure your work arrives immaculate.

Um. So there you go. Those are some of the things I learned. Um, but I'll cover it properly when I've been through judging for the Guild, um, later this week, and I think that is everything. If not, um, Sarah will kill me or kick me or both. Um, if you have any questions at all, you can always reach me. And if you fancy, just browsing a ton of stuff, [00:20:00] lighting, diagrams, um, guides, videos, uh, the, um, frame previews that we can, you can download to visualize, uh, your, how your images will look on a wall. Then it's all on mastering portrait photography.com, which is also, as it happens, the spiritual home of this particular podcast and whatever else you're doing on this, really quite miserable Tuesday night before I go home and climb onto the Peloton bike to do some exercise. Please, whatever you do, be kind to yourself. Take care.

If you’ve ever stared at a “competition worthy” image and thought, “Is this actually any good, or am I just emotionally attached and mildly delusional?” then this episode is for you.

In this one, I’m lifting the lid on what really happens inside a judge’s head when your prints hit the panel: the mindset you need, the mistakes we see over and over again, and the tiny details that can quietly kill an otherwise beautiful image.

We’ll talk blown highlights, grubby greys, over sharpening, dodgy mounts, vignettes turned up to eleven, and why blindly following the latest photo trend might actually sink your chances. We’ll also get into mentors, titles, paper choice, time pressure (my personal kryptonite), and why the only real failure in competitions is not to enter at all.

If you’re thinking about qualifications, print comps or you just want to finish your images to a higher standard, grab a drink, have a listen, and then go and do something brave with your work.

Links from this episode
Workshops & mentoring:
Come and spend a day (or more) with us at the studio, learning lighting, posing, dogs, families, workflow and everything in between.
👉 View upcoming workshops

One year mentoring programme:
If you want ongoing support with competition entries, qualifications panels and growing your portrait business, this is where we dig in properly.
👉 Find out about one to one mentoring

Mastering Portrait Photography – the book (new edition):
The fully updated edition of the book, packed with new images, new sections and new stories.
👉 Buy the book on Amazon

Signed copies from the studio:
If you would like a signed copy straight from our studio (possibly with a bit of dog hair in the packaging courtesy of Rufus), order here.
👉 Order a signed copy

Leave a review for the podcast:
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👉 Review the podcast on Apple Podcasts

The Societies’ image competition:
If this episode has nudged you towards entering, this is a great place to start.
👉 Enter The Societies’ image competition

 

Transcript

[00:00:00] it's Thursday, late afternoon, early evening. It's gone dark. It's November. I've got what's left of a mug of coffee next to me. And I just thought I'd sit and record this podcast. It's been, it has to be said a really good day. We've had a lovely client in seeing their wedding pictures, which is always lovely when it goes the way it did.

Lots of tears. Their's, not mine. Um, they love them. They've picked well for their album, cannot wait to produce that for them. It's been a really good week. Lots of nice clients, but over the next few days, Sarah and I are really hoping we get to step away from it just for a bit. We were hoping to get abroad, but it looks like with scheduling issues, that isn't gonna quite happen.

But we live in an area stuck between London and Oxford, so at the very least we have a huge proportion of interesting things to go and have a look at. And that's my hope is we get away from this beautiful business that I love, but it really is all encompassing. So just for a day or [00:01:00] two time to take a bit of a break, I'm Paul and this is the Mastering Portrait Photography podcast.

So, hello one and all. I hope you're all well in this particular podcast, um, because I'm hoping to get out the door and go for a drink tonight with some friends. Um, a little less waffle and a , slightly more to the point podcast. Probably some of you will prefer that some of you might miss the randomness.

Um, however, if you listen to the last podcast, it was a little bit about what it's like to be a judge when you are assessing qualifications, panels, and print judging in general. Today what I wanted to do was go through some of the things that [00:02:00] occur to me that may be applicants either don't know or quietly ignore, which might be the truth.

But basically the things that as judges we see, and I thought I just stepped through it from that point of view. Slightly less about the judges, slightly more about what to look for if you are entering a competition. Now, I've done this style of podcast. I think this might be my fourth, fifth, maybe sixth version of it over the years, can you believe it's been nearly 10 years I've been recording this. Um, either way, what I wanted to do was just update it, go through some of the things that are fresh in my mind from judging qualifications a few weeks ago, and then judging the Print Master's competition, um, just, uh, a couple of weeks ago.

Both of those, you learn different things. You see different things, but I thought I'd just relay, if I can, the stuff that maybe you should consider if you are thinking about entering, in particular, print competitions, [00:03:00] but this extends out to really any image competition you can, you can think of. So with that, if that's not your shtick, then this isn't the episode for you.

But if you fancy just having a listen and seeing if this echoes with you, that would be great.

So.

Listen up. Now. Firstly, I have to admit that from my point of view, entering competitions, I recognize as being both terrifying and slightly addictive. There really is something wonderful about finishing your images to a level that maybe you don't normally do.

Maybe that, that tiny amount of perfection, those stray hairs, those eyebrows, lips, I mean, of course my portrait photographer, so I'm talking primarily people here, but that level of detail that maybe your regular, everyday Good Professional Practice, we call it, maybe your everyday work doesn't warrant because, in the end, every hour you spend on an image is cost. We [00:04:00] don't normally regard it as cost, 'cause we enjoy our job and it's time. You know what? It's like time. Who cares about time? Well, you should because it's your business. And so there's something really addictive about spending that time with a purpose on an image that you think you believe maybe, maybe just maybe will do well in a competition.

Now that said, of course, every time you enter to, you don't know what the judges are gonna say. And let's get that right out in the open at the beginning, at the top of this podcast, a different day, a different judge, a different result. And that is just the way of it. So you cannot ever really totally predict what you're gonna do, how your images are gonna perform. You can't. You can have a guess, and you can predict within a boundary or two. But in the end, it is totally down to what the judges see on the day and you have to get used to that no matter how much effort you've [00:05:00] poured into an image. And I've had images where I was certain, certain it was going to do well and did nothing.

And I've had other images where I was like, well, it's all right, but if I'm lucky in the right judges are on the panel, it might do okay and they've gone on to win. You really dunno. So just be aware of that because those disappointments shouldn't deter you. Yeah, they should just really drive you to do more of it.

But that's very hard and I will admit that I too suffer from that sense of disappointment. The inferiority complex that comes with it. A degree of resentment, I suppose. What do the judges know when, when you win something? The judges amazing. I love them. They were brilliant. You could see how sharp their eyes were when the judges don't award you something or your images don't do well, of course, the judges were idiots. They didn't know what they were talking about. And as a judge, I'm completely aware of it.

So in this podcast, we're gonna go through what you should look out for, the mindset, the, uh, technical side of it, [00:06:00] some of the presentation stuff, and some of the silly things really, that as a judge, we sit collectively and just groan.

Um, there's sometimes you hear in the room that if only, if only. The, uh, image had this, if only the author had done that, those kinds of conversations. So let's work my way through the list. I put together a little bit of a list of things, um, and let's hope that some of this chimes with you. So first section is all about, uh, mindset.

And at the end of the day, nearly everything about photography is what goes on in your head. So let's talk a little bit about your preparation and your mindset. First things first, you cannot, you cannot. Be objective about your own work. Alright? It's just not possible. And to be fair, no one can be truly objective about something that's creative.

You can be subjective and you can be experienced, but you cannot ever be objective when it's your own work. The memory of the shoot, the memory of the [00:07:00] client, the memory of the moment will totally cloud your judgment. You cannot do it. You are, you are emotionally invested in your work. So be aware of that because you need to get a mentor now by a mentor.

Ideally, it's someone who's been around a little bit, who's done a few things, knows their way around, competitions, the structures, the rules at the very least, um, hopefully, um, produces images that are of the standard you are hoping to produce, and preferably in a style that you wish to attain in a style that you wish to deliver.

Because if you are in tune with that person, in tune with their work, you'll listen to them more. It doesn't necessarily mean they have more or less skill than another mentor, but if you like their work and respect what they do, you're more likely to pay attention to what they see and what they say to you.

Now, if you can't get a mentor, at the very least, just pass it around some friends and see what people think and see [00:08:00] what they see. Be aware that your mom, or at least, my mom will always tell me my work is beautiful. Um, my mates are a little bit more brutal than that, but my mom will always tell me, but if you can find another photographer to give you a hand, it's the best thing you can do.

Next thing, the only true failure about competitions in the sense of failure is to not enter. Entering isn't a failure. Entering and winning is obviously the success we will wish for entering and not winning is simply just another level of success. It's not quite what you wanted, and it's certainly not recognizing your success the way you'd like, but not entering is the only true failure.

And of course with most competitions, they're anonymous. So who cares whether you enter and don't and your images aren't successful? Who cares whether your qualifications panel, um, doesn't get across the line? The only person who will tell the world is you. So if you are nervous, if you are concerned, if you're insecure, then [00:09:00] simply keep it under your hat until you need to.

So enter the competitions.

Go watch judging sessions. Not all judging sessions are public. The Societies they are, and of course, that's coming up in January as I record this. It's November 13th when I'm recording this. Um, but go and watch maybe The Society's judging.

Um, go listen to the judges, particularly in the new Vogue category because every image will get a critique from a judge. Um, maybe think about the click conference, which has been on the past couple of years, because again, each image has a short critique from at least one judge. So you get to learn. A lot of judging is anonymous and quiet, and it's just score panels, and that's not as useful as it could be, I guess, uh, but do go and listen because it's a free masterclass in, uh, critiquing and in standards. Now you must, you must, and I'll come back to this later, read the rules. Um, so many images get [00:10:00] in the end either disqualified or have so many marks knocked off them that they might as well have been disqualified simply because the applicant did not pay attention to the rules.

Whether it's about using ai, whether it's about composites, the wrong composites, whether it's about wrong print and presentation sizes, whether it's the wrong category and category definitions are sacred. As judges, we cannot move the images from one category to another. Even if we could see what the category should be, it's down to the applicant to move or to put the image rather into the correct category because if we move them, who knows, we might not just be helping you, um, win something.

We might be helping somebody else lose something and we may still be getting it wrong. And also there's a bigger challenge, I think in the, the order of categories in which we judge means what if we wanted to move an image into a category that we've already finished and signed off? What do we [00:11:00] do? How do we do that?

There's no way of doing that, not fairly. So judges cannot move images between categories. It's absolutely fundamental. So the category definitions are sacred. Read them, pay attention to them. Understand the nuance when it says domesticated animals. What does that mean when it says studio portrait? What does that mean?

Don't just assume you know it because every association will have slightly different rules. Every association will interpret them slightly differently. Go and read them. Pay attention, make notes on them. If you are at all, um, confused or don't understand them, go and ask someone. Email the people running the competition. They will nearly always get straight back to you.

Uh, give yourself time. Please give yourself time. There's always shipping delays, print issues, customs, nightmares these days are also part of the puzzle. Um, even recently we had stuff coming in, uh, from one of our supplies in Italy [00:12:00] and it just got stuck in customs in Italy coming outta the country rather than coming in.

I don't know why it got stuck, but it got stuck. Um, and it wasn't for print competition, but it highlighted just how easy it is for you to miss a deadline, and this is one that's really close to me is that, um, I'm the last minute kind of guy last minute.com, and so I'm forever up against a deadline and I'm forever aware that I'm taking a huge risk.

Um, unfortunately it's just the way my mind works and so I am truly qualified in making sure you do not make that mistake. Give yourself plenty of time. Uh, another one here, I dunno why I've put this in this particular section, but if I don't mention it now, I dunno whether I will, um, which is that, be careful of following trends blindly, being fashionable, creating images that are right now, the current trend is great.

Of course, it's great. [00:13:00] But if you're gonna win a competition, you better be exceptional at it because everybody else is highly likely to be entering the same style of image. Image. And if you do that, if you are picking images that are similar to other people's, then the impact scores that the judges are looking for, the impact.

And listen to my previous podcast about that, the impact is diminished because if we've seen 10 of the same style of image. Guess what? The winner will be the one that gave us the greatest impact. So it's highly likely to be one of the first couple, and it will certainly be the one that's probably the highest standard, because that's where the impact score is.

So be very careful of doing that. I mean, I'm not saying strive always to be completely different because you think that's what you have to do to be good. You don't have to be different to be good. Being good is in and in and of itself different enough. But in competitions that stand out, that impact of seeing something you've [00:14:00] never seen before well, that does truly count.

And on that, let's go on to section two, which is technical execution. Okay. So in the end, the execution is everything. Now for this, I recorded this thinking. This is mostly about print competitions and in a print, absolutely everything shows, and that's why we do it. We use print as a medium for assessing the creativity and the control of the photographer, and it exposes things that screens simply don't, or at least most screens don't.

If you have the most expensive, truly calibrated monitor in a studio, that is the right light, um, levels. Um, and your, your monitor's been on for two hours, but you haven't been at the screen, um, for hours. And you can sit down with fresh eyes and look [00:15:00] at the screen. Yes, of course it will expose details, but there is something about print that seems to just surface both high points and low points in a photographer's process, which is why we do it.

It's a really good way of assessing an image. So here are a few things. That we have seen on the technical side of it over sharpening, I cannot overstate about over sharpening. Over sharpening is a bit of a killer. Judges hate it and we always see it. In all the years I've done this, all the years I've done this, I've never heard a judge say This image is under sharpened.

Now, I've heard judges say this image is blurred. I've heard this. Judges say This image has been blown up from a file that's too small. But I've never heard a judge say This image has been under sharpened. But I would state with a degree of confidence that in every [00:16:00] single session I've been a judge, one of the judges or myself have said, this image is over sharpened.

And of course you see it in halos, you see these little lines around edges, and they're very easy to spot. If you are worried, if you, you are on the edge and you're thinking, have I sharpened it enough? Turn the sharpening down. Or indeed, with modern sensors, just turn it off. You don't need it. Print. Well control your exposure.

Well control your colors. Well control your tones, well control your printing well, and you don't really need to sharpen very much, if at all. Uh, always do it last in the process. Once you've got your file to the size you want it to, the print size, you want it. Apply your sharpening right at the end of that chain.

If you do it at the beginning. Um, I know there are pre- raw sharpeners and things out there. If you do your sharpening at the beginning, of course every edit you make runs the risk of exaggerating the effects of the sharpening. So always sharpen at the end if you need to at all.

You must get your [00:17:00] exposure right. And by that I simply mean don't blow your highlights, don't block your blacks. Um, blown highlights, on the whole, are a nightmare. If there are blown highlights in a print, it is highly likely that the judges are gonna firstly spot it, and then secondly penalize for it. And I speak from experience here.

There was an image that came up in the last round of judging where to me as a judge, everything about the image was essentially everything I would've liked to have created. The shape, the form, the moment, the emotion, the printing, the mounting, everything about it was on point. But some sunlight had coming through the ceiling in the, through the skylight, I think had clipped the edges of some shiny stone work had blown the highlights.

And that became the sticking point with most of the judges. Um, I was willing to give some leeway on it, on this particular image, um, because the emotion of it was so powerful, but quite rightly, the other [00:18:00] judges challenged that. Um, and in the end I had to, of course, see their point of view because blown highlights, are blown highlights.

Similarly with blocked shadows, and this is a little bit more subtle blown highlights are blown highlights, unless they're just a specular point on a shiny surface. Um, they are what they are. But blocked shadows are a little bit more nuanced because you have to ask yourself, would you see detail in that area of the print?

And if the answer to that is yes, we would or would expect to then block shadows are a bit of a headache and you can't have them. If on the other hand you wanna put an image on a black background, then that's a slightly different conversation. You can have black areas, big blocked black areas, if that's your style, if it's a stylistic choice.

Um, similarly, you can have big blocks of white as long as it's not paper white, um, on the page, you always want some ink on the page. Um, so [00:19:00] block black's a little bit more nuanced. So do your test prints, get your paper you're gonna use, print a series of blacks from 0% up to 10%. Find out where the break point is, where you can clearly see the difference between those points, and that's your minimum black. That's the darkest your image can be. Whether it's 5%, 6%, 7%, whatever. It's, that's the darkest you want for the blacks that you are producing.

Uh, make sure eyes are sharp. Um, again, I speak as a portrait photographer really here. Uh, if the eyes are not sharp, it's unlikely. That the image is going to do well unless demonstrably in the image you can see that that was the intent of the photographer.

Blurred eyes, very rare that they do well.

Make sure the catch lights are in there. You do need some kind of sparkle in the eyes. You don't want that sort of dark lifeless look, but just make sure they're in the right place and that makes sense 'cause it's easy to Photoshop. Um, highlights in catch lights into eyes these days.

But be careful. You put them in the right place. Uh, watch [00:20:00] for dust spots, stray hairs, cloning marks, those kinds of things. We had a couple of images recently where there were visible dust spots in the sky, and at that point, you know, you, you are very limited in how well an image can do if there are dust spots, because it's sort of digital photography 1 0 1: clean your sensor, do not have dust spots, do not have stray hairs in there.

Um, make sure that any, any cloning is invisible. 'cause the judges one or two judges. I know, I, I spot them reasonably well. I'm okay at it. But there are one or two judges I know that at the other end of a room will shout. I can see they're cloning and when you investigate it, yeah, you can.

Um, some people are just, they have a gift for that in the same way that some people can hear whether music is slightly just ever so slightly off rhythm or off key. Um, many judges I think, can spot things like, um. Cloning marks. I'm very good at spotting any kind of dust, marks and banding in skies. You know that color banding you get, [00:21:00] uh, but some of you, you just need to make sure it's technically on point.

Make sure you are using a fully color calibrated workflow. You need to calibrate your monitor. You need to calibrate your printer. You need to be producing images that the color is spot perfect, not just for you, but when the judges see it. So you're gonna need some way of viewing on the screen, checking your printer, and then viewing the prints afterwards.

Not many of us can afford D 50 light boxes, but you can get pretty close with some really high quality LED lighting. Bright lighting, I think Datacolor do one. Ilford do one to do spot checking on prints. They're about a hundred pounds I think at the moment, high CRI that make the colors pop and you'll see all of the tone.

Just pop your print underneath. And he'd be amazed, amazed how much detail just leaps off the page. And of course, as judges, that's how we are assessing the images. So you [00:22:00] need to do the same to be sure that what you see on your screen is exactly what you are hoping to show the judges,

uh, paper choice match your paper to your image. Um, there are lots of safe choices, of course, you know, these semi mats, um, good colors, good dynamic range. Good D Max. Um. Barita is a lovely paper, but just be aware it's very contrasty and it can run the risk of your block, your blacks blocking up a little bit, so just do your tests. Um, some of the papers they look great front on, but if you look from an angle they expose where there's not much ink on the paper, um, I think it's called chroming or bronzing.

And if you know this, if you hold a jet, an inkjet print up, and you move it around under the light, you see the the reflectivity change. Be aware of it. Um, and baritas one of those papers are quite susceptible. So be careful because when we're judging, as I said in the previous podcast, in a row of five judges, the outer judges walking in [00:23:00] will see your print initially from an angle.

And if that angle shows where the ink isn't being laid down on the paper, that's gonna mean the first things they spot. So print some test strips. Make sure you understand your paper.

Section three. Print quality and presentation. I've written down here the final polish. I must have been having a moment when I wrote this out, the final polish, um, and I wrote down, this is your shop window.

Hmm. Okay. Well, in a sense it is, um, it's certainly how you're gonna sell the image to the judges and your print must look spot, perfect. And here's the thing. Increasingly people are using labs for their prints and having their prints delivered straight to the competition. I can understand why people do that. You only pay for one set of postage for a start. However, always, always see your print before submitting it. I know it's more expensive, I know it's harder, but in the end, the judges assume [00:24:00] that you have seen those prints. They assume you delivered what you want us to see. So as such. We assume you did it.

Any defects? There's no excuse. It's yours. So you must, you must see your prints before submitting them. Too many people I know when you're working overseas, that's a little bit more difficult. You send your files to, say a UK lab, a UK competition, or you send your files to a US lab. It's a US competition in your UK based, but there's no excuse for a poor print.

Poor print. There's no excuse for a poor quality print coming in front of the judges. We will assume you've seen it. It's your problem.

Uh, mounting and presentation, your mount is really important. Um, if you get the wrong mount size, basic reading the rules 1 0 1. [00:25:00] If the mount size is wrong, it will be disqualified.

It should be disqualified. And we are having this debate recently. About how harsh some of this is. And as judges, we want everybody to do well. We shouldn't be here to wreck someone's life or you know, deter them from entering. We should be here to help promote and encourage, and it feels really weird when we have to do something like disqualify a print.

But here's the point. Everybody else in that competition has gone to the effort of mounting them correctly. And we had one or two in the last, um, competition. I judged the print masters where the presentation was bang on point 20 by 16, and the most exquisite mount cutting and presentation of the print.

So imagine we let a print through, even if it's scored really well, and it was of an incorrect size, and it did well at the expense [00:26:00] of another print that had complied with the rules. So a better way of looking at this is we're not penalizing the photographers that didn't comply with the rules. We are rewarding the photographers who did comply.

That's how we do it. We're not punishing those who didn't. We're rewarding those who did, and that feels a lot more positive. And then we can kind of, it feels a bit more human, but that's what we have to do. If somebody's gone to all this effort. Of creating the most exquisite printing and mounting the right size, the right mount cuts complimentary paper to Matt Color.

Everything about it's perfect. And then we have one that's the wrong size. What are we supposed to do? Well, of course, what we do is reward the author that complied, and in the end, we have to just accept the fact that if you haven't complied, it's not our fault. If you haven't complied to the rules, that's not the judge's fault.

So read the rules, understand what it is they're looking for. Make sure there's no ambiguity. You've got it [00:27:00] absolutely in inches. If it's in inches, in centimeters or millimeters. If it's in millimeters, you know what's required of you comply with the rules. We cannot score an image that doesn't comply.

, Here's another thing that occurred to me, and this occurred to me a couple of times watching prints being handled.

Do not. If you do a flush mount, a flush print, and it's very effective. Sometimes I saw some beautiful ones this year where essentially you print on the paper, there's no separate mount. Now that's, you have to be careful if you're gonna do this. So if you do a full print, so you are just printing onto a big piece of paper and then mounting that print onto a 20 by 16 board.

So the whole thing basically is one big print. Be careful for a couple of reasons. The first is, remember that when you pack them. Highly likely to scratch because the print surface itself is right there, right under the print above it, and scratching becomes a little bit of a problem. Yes, you can put sealants and lacquers and things on them, [00:28:00] but it's always a bit of a risk.

The second thing is if you do print edge to edge, allow space around the edge. Don't do a full edge to edge 20 by 16 print. If you do that, when the. Print handlers and the print handlers are so careful, but the print handlers, the edge of the glove, runs every risk of being on top of the ink when they're handling the edges of the print.

And my recommendation is don't do that unless you have a very specific reason to do it. You've got some design that just works that way. Be careful. Allow enough space around the edge of your image that the print handlers can handle it with any, without any risk at all of them touching the ink.

Uh, a few things we saw this time around.

Um, we saw quite a lot of prints that were rippled, and all that means is they'd been taped to the back of the mount. There was no backboard. They'd been taped to the mount, and that [00:29:00] taping had a different expansion rate than the paper and the board. So essentially you've got three different expansion rates.

You've got the mat, you've got the tape, and you've got your print. And when you do that, there's every opportunity for the print to ripple. If it gets humid, if it gets drier, warmer, cooler, it doesn't really matter. As they change shape, you get rippling and rippling will cost you points. So the best way, if you can, if you have time and you can afford it, of course, these things are not really that cheap, is put your print mount, your print.

Onto an adhesive backboard so that it's flat mounted. It's, it's not the easiest thing in the world to do, but once you get the hang of it, it's really effective. If not, you can always photo mount or spray mount your print down onto a backboard, and all you're doing is making sure that it stays absolutely flat all the way through the process.

Now the boards always move a little bit. There's not a lot you can do about that. I'm looking at some of mine [00:30:00] who are sitting up on the shelf right now, and some of them have bowed a little bit over the years. But the prints, every single one of those prints is still absolutely flat on its backboards.

And that's 'cause I photo mounted them down. Um, I've, I usually do that, um, rather than, um, using adhesive boards, um, simply because, uh, it's easier for me and you, you can have a little bit of movement on the print before the adhesive finally cures. Um, but do something if you can't, if you have a really, a print that you just wanna let hang, then obviously, um, t mounting is the way to go.

Um, but you still will need a back on that board. So you'll need a backboard, then your print and the T hinges, and then your front mount. Um, do not put tape all the way around a print and stick it to the back of a mount and then stick it to a board. Or worse, no backboard at all because that print is gonna ripple.

There's no doubt about that. Your print must lie flat curled edges. They're distracting and they will get penalized.

Uh, I've also written here, I [00:31:00] dunno why I've written this in print quality and presentation. I must've been having a moment. Uh, subtle edits win. I dunno why it's in this particular section.

It's absolutely right. By the way, um, heavy retouching and strong vignettes, particularly strong vignettes, I think are one of the things we see the most of. Um, don't overdo your vignettes. Um, you don't need to on the whole. Uh, you can guide an eye in, and at the end of the day, we use vignettes and use differential focusing or, you know, shallow depths of field to draw the viewer, to draw the judge to the subject.

That's what we're doing. That's why we do this stuff is where do I want the viewer's eye to go? You've put it in a mount, it's got a window on that mount. So already you've guided the viewer away from the edges of, um, the presentation into the image. Now they're in the image. Now you have to guide them to the bit of the image you want 'em to see.

And that's what vignettes do and they're very effective. But a vignette should be more or less invisible. The viewer should not know your bit. You are guiding them [00:32:00] to the bit you want them to see. And too often the vignettes are too heavy and too unsubtle. Two things. One, if you want to check your vignettes, look at them in a small grid, such as Lightroom's, thumbnail, view the library view, and you'll see your vignettes.

They just stand out when your images are small. So that's one way of just checking them. The other is too many people. Ignore the fact that in reality, if you had areas of shadow and shade and areas of light in those areas of shadow and shade, you would still have specular highlights. They would still be white.

So, um, when you do your vignettes, make sure you still allow subtle highlights to come through. They're not affected or else, and vignette will just look muddy and dark and we'll know. You've put it on there. If though, on the other hand, little pockets of light, little bits of reflectivity come through the vignette, it might be that that was a natural vignette and those are the ones, the ones we don't know have been done will always do the best.[00:33:00] 

Okay. Section four, composition and storytelling. Uh, composition should be a guide, not something that obfuscates or confuses. So just place your subjects. I, I'm, I don't tend to use the word composition. It's obviously. Um, something that's in almost all of the rules of the competitions that I judge. Um, I would, I still prefer to call it layout because you lay out the bits that you have on the, in the photo it sounds, and somehow everyone calls it composition.

And I dunno why I like the word layout so much more. But I just do take the things that are in the picture, lay them out where you want them. Just sounds logical to me, but hey, you know, each of the road. Um, but just place your objects carefully. Give the subject room. So avoid getting your subject too close to the edge of the frame.

Don't crop through a joint. You can crop crop through the middle of a limb, not through a joint. Try not to skim the edges of things at the edges of the frame. And quite a few images this year actually thinking about it were they looked [00:34:00] like there wasn't enough breath around the image when it went into the matt.

But my suspicion was there was in the original raw file, and so people print the file as they want it, and then forget that you've got at least three or four millimeters all the way around a mounted print that's gonna crop in. So prepare your files to allow for that. Don't get just the edges of an arm or the, just the tiny bit of the top of the hair or something.

Um, you know, my view is if you're gonna crop, crop, otherwise give it space. Um, try and avoid distractions, particularly behind your subject or at the edges of the frame. Anything that draws your eye away from the subject. Um, one thing as judges we do not do is we never turn an image upside down. We're not allowed to.

We are only allowed to see the image as the author wished to, to see it, which is correct, by the way. But as an author, you can turn the image any which way you want, and there are [00:35:00] tons of tricks you can do. Turn the image upside down. Use saturation maps, use luminosity maps. There's all sorts of tricks you can do to check where the richest saturation is, to check your high points, your bright points, all of those things, because you don't want to lose that impact that in, in, as the judges are going through the detail, you want the judges to be, oh, that's great, the impact as it came in. And then as I explore, as I interrogate this image, it just gets better and better and better. That's what you want. Uh, horizontals and verticals. Make sure they are horizontal or vertical.

Too many times have I seen an ocean scape where the horizon of the ocean isn't Absolutely. Flat isn't absolutely horizontal. The clues in the title horizon horizontal. Um, now I know if you've got a lake coast or a lake shore or sometimes even just a coastline, that might be, if it's coming towards the viewer, [00:36:00] might be at an angle, but you have to stand back and get it so that it looks correct, and if ever there's a horizon in the distance, almost always, unless you're doing something creative, it should be horizontal.

Similarly. If you're doing architectural stuff, unless there's a reason why you have converging verticals and it's apparent your verticals need to be well vertical. Uh, a thing on storytelling here, I've said this quite a lot. Um, I'm not sure how popular it is when I say it, but I'm gonna say it anyway 'cause I believe it.

It is not the judge's job to decode and understand your story. It is your job. To guide the judges to that story. If we don't get it, that's not our problem. It's your problem. Now, I know occasionally a really beautiful image comes in, but the judges don't really appreciate all of [00:37:00] the messaging in it, and only afterwards when the author talks to one of us, it's like, ah, that's what it was about.

I wish I'd known. That's not our problem. That's definitely you. You use every trick you have from the title to the printing, the composition, the color, the subject, everything about it. That's your job. You have all of these levers you can pull for the judges to react, but it's your, it's your job. And remember, whatever else in a photograph, emotion will always beat cleverness.

It doesn't matter how clever you think you are being. Emotion will win out every single time. Picture a face with one tear rolling down it and you are already halfway there just because of the emotion levels. So be careful of that. Make sure that you are telling the story that you want told and make sure by testing it with a mentor and other people that people are gonna get it.

Uh, strategy playing the long game, section five. Um, do not. Cannibalize your set of [00:38:00] images. If you have shot five or six or seven or eight amazing images from a shoot, pick one, pick two. If you're at a push, preferably in different categories, do not send all seven. 'cause essentially you're sending us the same thing over and over.

And by the time we get to the last one, no matter what order and randomized set we get by the time we get to the last one, the impact is diminished. And the impact is the first and the last of all the criteria we look at. Do not get duped into thinking because every image is beautiful. You should enter them all.

Don't do that. You can enter 'em into other competitions, but be aware even then that many of the judges judge across multiple organizations. So just be aware of that. Pick one, pick the best. Two, put 'em into different categories if you have to. Um, but other than that, do not send the whole set. Um, I've written this here where it's, I've written variety shows depth and control, but repetition looks lazy.

The talk with variety is we tend to think of variety from the same shoots. [00:39:00] My argument is variety across what you do, even stylistically there's gonna be some similarities, but pick different shoots, um, different subjects, um, and that will show far better than, um, repeating similar images from the same shot.

Same se uh, same session, uh, too buly, uh, your titles, your image titles. Now titles are a little bit of, they're one of those odd little things. I'm not sure what I feel about titles. I've always really, if I'm honest, fought against them and I fought against them for the simple reason that if we are judging images, I'm not judging you as a poet, I'm judging you as a photographer, um, as a visual artist.

However, I'm acutely aware that when a title is read out, it can help a judging panel connect with the image. I am aware that it can heighten the emotion in a similar way. The varnishing an image in the old days. Brings everything together and just ties it to some [00:40:00] message. Um, titles do that. So if you, if it's an, if it's a competition that allows titles, even though I would love them not to be there, if it allows you to enter a title so on, because there's, it's unlikely that it will distract from the score, but it is likely that it will enhance the enjoyment.

Consequently, the impact. That the image will have on the judges. Alright, uh, so titles, yes. Uh, where am I? Um, yes, uh, don't rush. Sorry. I was reading off a screen and lost position of where I was. Uh, don't rush. Um, I've already said this kind of, I have plenty of time. Print check, test, review. Alright. Um, ideally do your print.

Leave them a couple of days, have a look at them down the line. Of course none of us have time for that, but the very least, print them one day, look at them. The next, let the ink settle for a start. 24 hours for most colors to settle. Um, after that, um, [00:41:00] you want your emotions to settle. So do you look at the images cold or at least as cold as you can.

So print check and then, um, rest and review. Use feedback. Your mentor if you have to, people around you, friends, family, get feedback. Even if you don't like it, get feedback because you'll learn from it. Okay. Some common pitfalls. Section six, um, already mentioned a few of these. Uh, these happen a lot, so don't do them.

Simple as that. Don't enter your image into the one category. Um, you know, if it says newborns can only have another person in the shot as a supporting act, that doesn't mean, um, a family photograph that's not a newborn. That might be a newborn. They might have a newborn, but that's a family photograph.

It's a family group. Um, newborns are newborns. It's a very specific category. It's four newborns under the age of seven or eight or nine weeks, whatever is the, the category rules. Um, you can have hands, you can have shoulders. You probably [00:42:00] can't have people in most of the associations read the rules specific to the association or the competition.

You're entering, um, similarly, whether your print and mount sizing, make sure that you have the right print and or mount size, too many images get. Um, and, but the thing is, the real sadness here is that if you've gone to the effort of printing your image, mounting your image, and sending it in, it's the wrong size.

We're gonna disqualify it. But you've already paid the money. You've not only entered, you've not only paid the entrance fees, but you've produced a print and a map. Um, so the loss is just even harder. So just read the rules. Um, I've mentioned ripples and coal prints I've mentioned, mentioned poorly calibrated workflow.

I've mentioned trendy clone style. In fact, to be honest, I dunno why I've done this section. We've mentioned all of these. I must have been having a fit of peak, but it's always good to recap. So recapping don't, don't enter, um, trendy fashion style imagery. And by fashion, I mean following a trend, I don't necessarily mean fashion category.[00:43:00] 

Um, that's similar to what's out there in the big, bad world, because actually you might find there's 20 other photographers doing the same. Don't have a sharpen, don't have a lot blacks don't have grubby grays. Yep. Grubby grays. We haven't mentioned grubby grays. Grubby grays drive me insane. What do I mean by grubby grays?

I mean, in monochrome in particular. In monochrome. Make sure that it's a really well produced monochrome. And by monochrome we simply mean all the colors are in the same palette. Um, black and white is a very specific subset of monochrome. Monochrome could be all colors of, of brown, for instance. Um, but you must have detail, you must have contrast.

You must have all of the tones that you wish to portray in the print. So just watch for that. Uh, plasticy skin was another one that came up this year. Um, actually it comes up every, every year, particularly with the advent of AI retouching. The sliders are too easy to whack to a hundred. And you know, your clients may love it, but print judges [00:44:00] probably won't.

We want things to look great. Perfect. Of course. But real, it should look like you produced it, not a machine produced it. Uh, right. Okay. Last bit. Why bother entering? Well, primarily I think there are two aspects to entering competitions. And by extension qualifications that are worth your while, at least from a professional photographer's point of view.

Firstly, it's good business. Any kind of decent award. And by when you say award winning, please be award winning. I really don't like someone getting, you know, I dunno. Um, I don't want to, I don't want to moan about some of the things that go on in the industry, but. When you say you are award-winning, you better have won an award.

And by that I mean won at the very least, [00:45:00] um, got a silver, sorry, a bronze or silver or gold at the overall level. Um, not a commended in a small competition. That's not award winning. That's, I got commended now. I'm sure, I'm sure I may hear from people about this one. And those things are valuable, by the way, and you can tot them up and you can put them at the certificates on the wall.

But if you're award-winning, award-winning. Anyway, I'll get down off my soapbox on this one. Sorry. Um, every time you win an award, it's wonderful publicity. Even if you come runner up, you can say, came runner up in a national competition. Um, that's fair enough. That's what you did and it's still great publicity.

As long as you explain why and what and all the rest of it, um, and how it's your clients, your subjects that got you there. Those kinds of messages are brilliant. So there's one angle on it. The other angle, of course, is from a personal development point of view, [00:46:00] just the process of preparing your files for competition changes you, it's a very specific set of skills, not necessarily ones you'll use every day with every client, but.

Having that in your back pocket, understanding the color work, understanding the retouching, the subtleties in layout or composition, storytelling, how to create vignettes properly printing, you know, I know not everybody prints these days. I think that's the way of it, because most image consumption is digital, but printing really does highlight things that you will not see on a screen under normal circumstances.

So. Those are the two reasons. Great publicity and it develops your skills and with that you grow. You grow in confidence, you grow, your discipline improves, you grow your experience watching, judging. If you enter competitions quite often [00:47:00] you'll go and watch the judging and then hear feedback. That feedback is invaluable.

One of the reasons I judge is because I've learned so much doing it. I was laughing with the judges the other day, you know, um, even when it's me putting up a challenge because I think there's something in an image that the other judges maybe haven't seen, and I get beaten down. You know, when you raise a challenge, it's one of the scariest things you do as a judge on the panel is to stick your hand up and say, I love you guys and I respect everything that you do and see, but I think there's something here that you may have missed, whether you're talking an image up or talking an image down.

And it's really scary sometimes. You are absolutely right and the other judges go, do you know what? Saw that or didn't see that? I'll come with you. Sometimes they will line up and say, here's why we don't agree with you. We're gonna stay where we are. And that's heartbreaking too. But the process, the discourse, the investigation, the argument, they're really powerful.

It's why I judge, because I learned so much. [00:48:00] Um, of course, entering a competition is quite a brave thing to do. Of course keep it, keep it anonymous. You don't have to admit to ever entering anything. You only admit to winning something. And remember, the only real failure in image competitions is not to enter them.

So those are all of the points I wrote down. I'm sure there are many more, and there are plenty of other podcasts I've done on this topic. This is just my latest update on the same thing. But sure, surely there is something in there for all of us. Even me as I'm going through it, I'm thinking, I must remember that next time I enter a print, how many times have I got caught out by my own mistakes, when I should know better?

I'm a judge. I've been doing this a very long time now, and yet I still make those stupid mistakes. The biggest mistake I make, by the way, is to not allow enough time, and from that time box, everything else falls apart because I'm working at the last minute, I'm working at midnight or one or two or three in the morning.

I'm having to do everything on the back foot, which is [00:49:00] unfortunately the way I am, but from that single mistake, everything else flows. Sometimes I don't enter the competition because it was too late for me to think about it. Sometimes I do enter the competition, but it was too, too late to create the prints that I truly wanted to.

Sometimes I'm so late that I forget some great images that were in the, in my portfolio that I just didn't have time to go and find and I forgot about them. My biggest weakness. Is time. I dunno what yours is. Whatever it is though, get your images sorted, get yourself another pair of eyes, whether it's a mentor, workshops, friend, whatever, and get on and do it.

Right. So on that happy note, I'm gonna go um, and join some friends for a drink in our local pub and then I'm gonna have a few days out with Sarah. It's gonna be lovely. Um, I'd love to hear what you think about the podcast. Of course. We love to hear the feedback. Please do head over. To Apple's podcast. Um, and leave us a review on there.[00:50:00] 

Uh, no matter whether you are Google or Apple or you don't do any of those, the best place for reviews is on Apple, is it encourages so many more people to come and listen. If you fancy workshops, head over to mastering port portrait photography and go to the workshop section. Uh, we have a whole load of dates.

Um, some of them have sold out now, uh, but they're still in there. And I spent, I had a lovely week this week. It's been such a nice week. Um, spent a very happy hour going through someone's, um, images came across for a coffee, actually just as part of a mentoring session. Um, and we just sat and explored images and chatted ideas.

It's an absolutely wonderful thing to do. So if you fancy a workshop, uh, they're on the list. If you fancy, um, something a little bit longer term, some mentoring. Then of course, that's on there too. The deadlines for judging, uh, for the, uh, society's competition are looming. Um. So, uh, if you fancy that, then please do head across to the society's image competition website.

Um, I too, uh, must get my images in. Um, [00:51:00] I'm dreading leaving it to too late, but I can't help but think that might be what's coming because December for me is manic. So a load of that, um, please do, if you haven't already bought it by, this is a shameless plug. I don't care. Please buy the latest Mastering portrait photography.

Book, uh, the updated version, it's available on Amazon. Um, uh, Amazon by the way, can sell it to me cheaper than I can buy it from our own whole, from, from our own wholesaler, which I still think is slightly ironic. However, it is what it is. It's the way the world or the big suppliers. Uh, but if you want one signed, you can order that from mastering portrait photography.com.

Otherwise, head over to Amazon and if you do have a copy of the book. Please leave us a review. That's a lot of asking you to leave reviews, but all you have to do is log in, find the bit, write something nice, hit a few stars, well hopefully five or four. Um, and then you're done. And then I'm forever, I'm forever in your debt and you feel better about yourself.

Uh, so, uh, please do, uh, do those things head over to, uh, Amazon Lib's review on [00:52:00] the Amazon website. That would be great. And with that, I'm gonna sign off. I'm gonna finish what's left of a cold mug of coffee and I'm gonna go have a drink with some friends and spend a few days. Out and about with Sarah doing something interesting.

Not sure yet what whatever else you do, wherever you are, whatever you're doing with your, your prints, your competitions, your qualifications, be kind to yourself. Take care.

Husky voice, Friday night whiskey, and a mountain of cheese from the book launch. In this episode I lift the lid on what really happens inside a print judging room. The rotation of five from a pool of seven. Silent scoring so no one nudges anyone else. How a challenge works, what the chair actually does, and why we start with impact, dive through craft, then finish on impact again to see what survives. Layout over composition, light as the whole game, and a final re-rank that flattens time drift so the right image actually wins.

If you enjoy a peek behind the curtain, you will like this one. You can grab a signed copy of the new Mastering Portrait Photography at masteringportraitphotography.com and yes, I will scribble in it. If you already have the book, a quick Amazon review helps more than you know. Fancy sharpening your craft in person? Check the workshops page for new dates and come play with light at the studio. 

The book: https://masteringportraitphotography.com/resource/signed-copy-mastering-portrait-photography-new-edition/

Workshops: https://masteringportraitphotography.com/workshops-and-mentoring/

 

Transcript

[00:00:00] 

Hey, one and all. How are you doing? Now? I'll be honest, I still have the remnants of a cold, and if you can hear that in my voice, I do apologize, I suppose you could call it slightly bluesy, but you can definitely hear that I'm ever so slightly husky. It's Friday night, it's eight 30, and I was, I've been waiting a week to record this podcast, hoping my voice would clear it hasn't, and so I've taken the opportunity having a glass of whiskey and just cracking on.

So if you like the sound of a slightly bluesy voice, that's great. If you don't, I'm really sorry, but whichever, which way I'm Paul. And this is the Mastering Portrait Photography podcast.

So it's been a busy month or two. You can always tell when it's busy [00:01:00] 'cause the podcasts. Get, don't really get delivered in quite the pace I would like. However, it really has been a busy couple of weeks the past few. Let me, I'm gonna draw your attention to it. The past couple of weeks, we've, there's a ton of stuff going on around us for a moment.

I was up in Preston. I've been up in Preston twice over the past couple of weeks. The first one was working as a qualifications judge for the BIPP, the British Institute Professional photographers. Um. Which I love judging. I love judging. It's exhausting, but I love it. And that was qualifications, panels.

Then last week was the launch. Of the updated edition of Mastering Portrait Photography, the book, which is where it all started, where Sarah Plata and I published this book that seems to have been incredibly popular. 50,000 copies translated from English into four other languages. Chinese, Korean, German.

And Italian, do not ask me, do not ask me the logic on why the book is in those [00:02:00] particular languages. To be fair, we only found out about the Chinese and Korean when we were trying to get some marketing material together to talk about the new book Nobody had told us. I'm not even sure the publisher knew, to be honest.

Uh, but we have found copies. We have a Chinese copy here in the studio. I'm still trying to get a Korean version. So if you are listening to this. Podcast in Korea. Please tell me how to get hold of a version in Korean because we'd love to complete the set. There's, in fact, there's two Italian versions. We knew about that. There's a German version we knew about that hardback version. It's great. It's really beautiful. Very I, like I, I don't live in Germany and I don't like to stereotyping entire nation, but the quality of the book is incredible. It's absolutely rock solid, properly engineered. Love it.

We have a Chinese version here but the Korean version still alludes us. However, this week the new version, mastering portrait photography is out. And as you know, I, Sarah interviewed me for the podcast last week to talk about it. Well, it's out. We've had our launch party, uh, we invited everybody who [00:03:00] has featured in the book who, everybody, every picture in the book that we asked the person in it to come to the studio for a soiree.

And it was brilliant. I've never seen so much cheese in all my life, and by I don't mean my speech, I mean actual cheese. We had a pile of it, still eating it. So it's been a week and I'm still eating the cheese. I dunno quite how, well, quite by how much we vacated, but probably by several kilos. Which I'm enjoying thoroughly.

I've put on so much weight this week, it's unreal, but I'm enjoying the cheese. And then on Sunday we had an open day where we had set the studio out with some pictures from the book and some notes of the different people. Who featured and what I might do, actually, I'd, I wonder if I can do a visual podcast.

I might do a visual podcast where I talk about those images, at some point on the website, on masteringportraitportraitphotography.com. I will do the story and the BTS and the production of every single image that's in the book, but it's gonna take me some [00:04:00] time. There's nearly 200 images in there.

Um, and every one of them, bar one is a new image or is, is. It is, it is a new image in the book, and it has been taken in the 10 years or the decades subsequent to the first book, all bar one. Feel free to email me. Email me the image you think it might be. You'll probably guess it, but it's it's definitely in there.

Um, and so it's been really busy. And then at the beginning of this week, I spent two days up in Preston again, judging again, but this time it was for the British Institute of Professional Photographers print Masters competition. Ah, what, what a joy. Six other judges and me, a chair of judges. Print handlers, the organizers.

Ah, I mean, I've seen so many incredible images over those 48 hours, and in this podcast I want to talk a bit about how we do it, why we do it, what it feels like to do it, [00:05:00] because I'm not sure everybody understands that it's it, it's not stressful, but we do as judges, feel the pressure. We know that we are representing, on the one hand, the association as the arbiters of the quality of the curators of these competitions, but also we feel the pressure of the authors because we are there too.

We also enter competitions and we really, really hope the judges pay attention, really investigate and interrogate the images that we've entered. And when, when you enter competitions, that heightens the pressure to do a good job for the authors who you are judging. So in this podcast, I'm gonna talk through some of the aspects of that.

Forgive me if it sounds like I'm answering questions. It's because I wrote myself some questions. I wrote some [00:06:00] questions down to, how I structures the podcast usually, uh, the podcast rambles along, but this one I actually set out with a structure to it, so forgive me if it sounds like I'm answering questions.

It's 'cause I'm answering my own questions. What does it feel like? How do you do it? Et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, I hope it's useful. Enjoy. And it gives you an insight into what it's like to be a competition judge.

Okay. As you walk into the judging room. For me at least, it's mostly a sense of excitement. There's a degree of apprehension. There's a degree of tension, but mostly there's an adrenaline rush. Knowing that we're about to sit and view, assess, score these incredible images from photographers all over the world, and let's remember that every photographer when they enter a print competition, which is what I'm talking about primarily here.

Every photographer [00:07:00] believes that print that category that year, could win. Nobody enters an image thinking that it doesn't stand a chance. Now you might do that modest thing of, I don't know, you know? Oh no, I don't. I I just chance my arm. No one enters a print they don't think has a chance of doing well.

That just doesn't happen. It's too expensive. It takes too much time. And as judges. We are acutely aware of that. So when you walk into the room, lots of things are going in your on, in your heads. Primarily, you know, you are there to do a job. You are there to perform a task. You are going to put your analytical head on and assess a few hundred images over the next 48 hours.

But as you walk in, there's a whole series of things. You, you are gonna assess the room. You see that your fellow judges, you're gonna see the print handlers. You're going to see the chair, you're gonna see the people [00:08:00] from whichever association it is who are organizing it, who or who have organized it.

You'll see stacks of prints ready to be assessed. There's a whole series of things that happen. A lot of hugging. It's really lovely. This year the panel of judges, uh, had some people in it I haven't seen for quite a few years, and it was beyond lovely to see them. So there's all of that, but you, there's this underlying tension you are about to do.

One of the things you love doing more than anything else in as part of your job. So there's the excitement of it and the joy of it, but there's always this gentle underlying tone of gravitas of just how serious it is. What we are doing. So there will be plenty of laughter, plenty of joy, but you never really take your eye off the task in hand.

And that's how it feels as you go to take your seats on the judging [00:09:00] panel.

So the most important thing, I think, anyway, and I was chair of qualifications and awards for the BIPP for a number of years, is that the whole room, everybody there is acting as a team. If you are not gonna pull as a team, it doesn't work. So there has to be safety, there has to be structure.

There has to be a process and all of these things come together to provide a framework in which you assess and create the necessary scores and results for the association, for the photographers, for the contestants. So you take your seats, and typically in a room, there are gonna be five judges at any one time assessing an image.

It's typically five. I've seen it done other ways, but a panel of judges is typically five. The reason we have five is at no point do all of the judges agree. [00:10:00] We'll go through this later in more detail, but the idea is that you have enough judges that you can have contention, you can have. Disagreements, but as a panel of judges, you'll come up with a score.

So you'll have five judges sitting assessing an image at any one time. To the side of the room, there'll be two more judges typically. Usually we have a pool of seven, five judges working, two judges sitting out every 10 prints or 10 minutes or whatever the chair decides. They'll we'll rotate along one, so we'll all move along one seat and one of the spare judges will come in and sit on the end and one of the existing judges will step off.

And we do that all day, just rotating along so that everybody judges, broadly speaking, the same number of images. Now, of course there is a degree of specialism in the room. If a panel has been well selected, there'll be specialists in each of the categories, but you can't have, let's say there's 15 categories.

You [00:11:00] can't have five specialist judges per category. That's simply impractical. Um, you know, having, what's that, 75 judges in a room, just so that you can get through the 15 categories is. A logistics task, a cost. Even just having a room that big, full of judges doesn't work. So every judge is expected to be reasonably multi-talented, even if you don't shoot, for instance, landscapes.

You have to have a working knowledge of what's required of a great landscape. Because our job as a panel isn't that each of us will spot all of the same characteristics in an image, all of the same defects, all of the same qualities. Each judge has been picked to bring their own. Sort of viewpoint, if you like, to the image.

Some judges are super technical, some judges, it's all about the atmosphere. Some judges, it's all about the printing and there's every bit of image production is [00:12:00] covered by each of the individual specialisms of the judges. And so while there is a degree of specialism, there will be a landscape.

Specialist in the room or someone who works in landscape, there will be plenty of portrait photographers, wedding photographers, commercial photographers. The idea is from those seven, we can cover all of those bases. So we have seven judges all at fellowship level, all highly skilled, all experienced.

And then there's the chair. Now the chair's role is not to affect the actual score. The chair's role is to make sure the judges have considered everything that they should be considering. That's the Chair's job, is to make sure the judges stay fresh, keep an eye on the scores, keep an eye on the throughput.

Make sure that every image and every author are given a. The time and consideration that they are due. What do I mean by that? Well, I just mean the photographers spent a lot of time and effort and [00:13:00] finance putting this print in front of us, and so it's really important that we as judges give it due consideration.

The chair, that's their role is to make sure that's what really happens. So the process is pretty simple, really. We will take our seats as a panel of judges and when we are settled. The chair will ask for the print, one of the print handlers. There's normally a couple of print handlers in the room, one to put the image on, one to take the image off.

The print handler will take the first image or the next image off the pile and place it in front of us on the light box. They will then check the print to make sure there's no visible or obvious dust marks, um, or anything, and give with an air blower or with the back of a a handling glove, or very gently take any dust spots away.

They will then step back. Now, the way the judges are set, there are five seats in a gentle arc, usually around the light [00:14:00] box. The outer two judges, judges one and five will step into the light box and examine or interrogate the print carefully. They will take as much time as they need to ascertain what they believe the score for that image should be.

They will then take their seats. The next two judges in, so let's say Judge two and four, they will step in to interrogate the print and do exactly the same thing. When they're ready, they'll step back and sit down. And then the middle judge, the final judge in seat three, they will step up and interrogate the print.

And the reason we do it that way is that everybody gets to see the print thoroughly. Everybody gets to spend enough time. Examining the print. And at that point, when we all sit down, we all enter our scores onto whatever the system is we're using either using iPads or keypads. There's all sorts of ways of doing it, but what's really important is we do all of this in total silence and we don't really do it because we need to be able to [00:15:00] concentrate.

Though that has happened, sort of distracting noises can play havoc. Um, we really do it so that we are not influencing any other judge. So there's no, oh, this is rubbish, or, oh, this is amazing. Or any of this stuff, because the idea is that each judge will come to their own independent score. We enter them, and then there's a process as to what happens next.

So that's the process. If at some point a single judge when the image appears, says, I can't judge this for whatever reason, usually it's because they've seen the image before. I mean, there's one this week where I hadn't directly influenced the image. But the author had shown me how they'd done it, so they'd stepped me through the Photoshopping, the construction, the shooting, everything about the image.

I knew the image really well, and so when the image appeared on the light box, I knew while I could judge it, it wasn't fair to the author or to the other [00:16:00] competitors that I should. So I raised my hand, checked in with the chair, chair, asked me what I wanted. I said, I need to step off this. I'm too familiar with the work for me to give this a cold read, an objective read.

So I if, if possible, if there's another judge, could they just step in and score this one image for me? And that means it's fair for all of the contestants. So that's that bit of process when we come to our score. Let's assume the score's fine. Let's assume, I dunno, it gets an 82, which is usually a merit or a bronze, whatever the system is.

The chair will log that, she'll say that image scored 82, which is the average of all five of us. She'll then check in with the scores and the panel of judges. He or she rather, uh, they, so they will look at us and go, are you all happy with that result? That's really important. Are you all happy? Would that result?

Because that's the opportunity as judges for one of us, if we're not comfortable that the image is scored where we think it probably should. And [00:17:00] remember with five of you, if the score isn't what you think, you could be the one who's not got your eye in or you haven't spotted something, it might well be you, but it's your job as a judge to make sure if there's any doubt in your mind about the scoring of an image that.

You ask for it to be assessed again, for there to be discussion for the team to do its job because it might be that the other members of the panel haven't seen something that you have or you haven't seen something that they have, that both of those can be true. So it's really important that you have a process and you have a strict process.

And this is how it works. So the chair will say you are happy. One of the judges may say. No, I'm not happy or may say I would like to challenge that or may simply say, I think this warrants a discussion. I'm gonna start it off. And then there's a process for doing that. [00:18:00] So the judge who raises the challenge will start the dialogue and they'll start in whichever direction it is that they think the scoring is not quite right.

They will start the dialogue that way. So let's say the score, the judge who's raising a challenge says the score feels a little low. What happens then is raise a challenge and that judge will discuss the image or talk to the image in a way that is positive and trying to raise the score. And they're gonna do that by drawing attention to the qualities that they feel the image has, that maybe they're worried the other judges haven't seen when they're done, the next judge depends, depending on the chair and how you do it.

The next judge will take their turn and he goes all the way around with every judge having their say. And then it comes back to the originating judge who has the right of a rebuttal, which simply means to answer back. So depending on how the [00:19:00] dialogue has gone it may be that you say thank you to all of the judges.

I'm glad you saw my point. It would be great if we could give this the score that I think this deserves. Similarly, you occasionally, and I did do one of these where I raised a challenge, um, where I felt an image hadn't scored, or the judges hadn't seen something that maybe I had seen in the image, and then very quickly realized that four judges had seen a defect that I hadn't.

And so my challenge, it was not, it's never a waste of a challenge. It's never ever a waste because it's really important that every image is given the consideration it deserves. But at the end of the challenge that I raised, the scoring stayed exactly the same. I stayed, I said thank you to all of the judges for showing me some stuff that I hadn't noticed.

And then we moved on. More often than not, the scores move as the judges say, oh, do you know what, you're right, there is something in this. Or, no, you're right. We've overinflated this because we saw things, but we missed these technical defects. It's those kinds of conversations. So that's a, a chair, that's a, a judge's [00:20:00] challenge.

Yeah, this process also kicks in if there's a very wide score difference between the judge's scores, same process, but this time there's no rebuttal. Every judge simply gives their view starting with the highest judge and then working anywhere on the panel. Um, and then there's a rare one, which does happen which is a chair's challenge, and the chair has the right in, at least in the competitions that I judge, the chair has the right to say to the panel of judges.

Could you just give this another consideration? I think there might be things you've missed or that feels like you're getting a little bit steady in your scoring. 'cause they, the chair of course, has got a log of all the scores and can see whether, you know, you're settling into like a 78, 79 or one judge is constantly outta kilter.

The chair can see everything and so your job as the chair is to just, okay guys, listen, I think this image that you've just assessed. Possibly there's some things one way or the [00:21:00] other that you might need to take into consideration. It doesn't feel like you have. I'd like you to discuss this image and then just do a rescore.

So those are the, those are the mechanisms. So in the room you've got five judges plus two judges who are there ready to step in when required either on the rotation or when someone recuses themself and steps out. Usually two print handlers and then usually there's at least one person or maybe more from the association, just doing things like making sure things are outta their boxes, that the scores are recorded on the back of the prints, they go back into boxes, there's no damage because these prints are worth quite a lot of money. And so, there's usually quite a few people in the room, but it's all done in silence and it's all done to this beautiful process of making sure it's organized, it's clear it's transparent, and we're working as one team to assess each image and give it the score that it deserves.

so when the print arrives on the box. It has impact. Now, whether you like it or not, [00:22:00] whether you understand it or not, whether you can define it or not, the print has an impact.

You're gonna see it, you're gonna react to it. How do you react to it? Is it visceral? Does your heart rate climb? Do you. Do you explore it? Do you want to explore it? Does it tell a clear story? And now is when you are judging a competition, typically the association or the organization who are running the competition will have a clear set of criteria.

I mean, broadly speaking, things like lighting, posing layout or composition storytelling. Graphic design, print quality, if it's a print competition. These are the kinds of things that, um, we look for. And they're listed out in the competition guides that the entrant, the author will have known those when they submitted their print.

And the judges know them when we're assessing them, so they're kind of coherent. Whatever it is that the, the entrance were told, that's what we're judging [00:23:00] to the most important. Is the emotional connection or the impact? It's typically called visual impact or just impact. What's really important about that is that it's very obvious, I think, to break images down into these constructed elements like complimentary colors or tonal range or centers of interest, but they don't really do anything except create.

Your emotional reaction to the picture. Now, we do use language around these to assess the image, but what we're actually looking for is emotional impact. Pictures tell stories. Stories invoke emotions. It's the emotions we're really looking for. But the trick when you are judging is you start with the initial impact.

Then you go in and you in real tiny detail, look at the image. Explore it, interrogate it, [00:24:00] enjoy it, maybe don't enjoy it. And you look at it in all of the different categories or different areas, criteria that you are, that the judges that the organization have set out. And then really, although it never gets listed twice, it should do, impact should also be listed as the last thing you look at as well.

Because here's the process. You look at the image. There's an impact. You then in detail investigate, interrogate, enjoy the image. And then at the very end you ask yourself, what impact does it still have? And that's really important because the difference between those two gives you an idea of how much or how well the image is scoring in all of the other areas.

If an image has massive impact when you, let's put 'em on the light box, and then you explore it and you [00:25:00] enjoy it, and you look at it under the light, and then at the end of it you're still feeling the same thing you did when it came on the light box, that's a pretty good indicator that all the criteria were met.

If on the other hand, as you've explored the image, you've realized. There are errors in the production, or you can see Photoshopping problems or blown highlights or blocked blacks, or things are blurred where they should be sharp or you name it. It's these kinds of things. You know, the printing has got banding in the sky, which is a defect.

You see dust spots from a camera sensor. These gradually whittle away your impact score because you go back to the end and you ask, what impact does the image now have? And I've heard judges use terms like at the end of the process, I thought that was gonna be amazing when it first arrived on the light box.

I just loved the look of it from a distance, but when I stepped in, there were just too many things that [00:26:00] weren't quite right. And at the end of it, I just felt some would, sometimes I've heard the word disappointed you. So that's certainly how I feel. When an image has this beautiful impact and the hair stand up on the back of your neck and you just think, I cannot wait to step in and explore this image in detail.

'cause I tell you one thing, most authors don't own a light box. When you see a print on a beautiful light box, the, there's something about the quality. The way the print ESS is you actually get to see what a print should look like. So when you step in, you are really excited to see it. And if at the end of that process you're slightly disappointed because you found defects in the printing or problems with the focusing or Photoshop or whatever it is.

You really are genuinely disappointed. So that's how you approach it. You approach it from this standpoint of a very emotional, a very emotional connection with the image to start with, and then you break [00:27:00] it down into its elements, whatever those elements are for the competition. And then at the end, you ask yourself really, does it still have the impact?

I thought it would because if it does, well, in that case, it's done really, really well.

one of the things that's really interesting about judging images is we, we draw out, we write out all of these criteria and.

Every image has them really. I mean, well, I say that of course every image doesn't have them. If you are, if you're thinking about landscape or a picture of a shampoo bottle, it doesn't have posing, for instance, if that's one of your criteria. But typically there's a standard set of criteria and every image has them layout, color uh, photographic technique, et cetera.

So if we look at let's say composition, let's talk about composition. Personally, I like to use the term layout rather than composition because it [00:28:00] feels a little bit more like a verb. You lay the image out, you have all of the bits, you lay them out. I like that because when we are teaching photography when we say to someone, right, what are all of the bits that you have in front of you?

How are you gonna lay them out? It feels a lot more, to me, at least more logical than saying, how are you gonna compose the image? Because it allows. I think it allows the photographer to think in terms of each individual component rather than just the whole frame. So we are looking for how the image is constructed.

Remember that every photographer really should think about an image. As telling a story, what's the story that you want somebody else? Somebody that you've never met. In this case a judge, but it could be a client or it could just be somebody where your work is being exhibited on a wall. What do you want them to look at?

What do you want them to see? Where do you want that eye to go? And there are lots of tricks to [00:29:00] this, and one of them is layout or composition. So we've got through the initial impact, boom. And the excitement. And then you start to think, is the image balanced? I like to think of an image having a center of gravity.

Some photographers will use center of interest, which is a slightly different thing, but I think an image has a center of gravity. The component parts of the image create balance. So you can have things right down in the edges of the frame, but you need something to balance it like a seesaw. You can't just.

Throw in, throw parts of the puzzle around the frame. So you are looking for where do they land? And of course, as photographers, we talk about thirds, golden ratios, golden spirals, all of these terms. But what we are really looking for is does the image have a natural flow? Does it feel like everything's where it should be?

Does your eye go to the bit that the author probably wanted you to look at? Have they been effective in their [00:30:00] storytelling? And by storytelling, I don't necessarily mean storytelling as in photojournalism or narrative rich photography. What I mean is what did they want you to see, and then did you go and see it?

Separation? Is the background blurred? And let's say the, the subject is sharp. That's a typical device for making sure you look at the subject. Is the color of the background muted in a way that draws your attention? Again to whatever it is in the foreground. So layouts one of those tools. So we work our way around it and try and figure out does the positioning of all of the elements of the image does their positioning add or distract from the story?

We think that author was trying to tell. Let's remember that it's not the judge's job to understand the story. It's the author's job to tell the story in a way that the judges can get it. Too often, you know, when I, when I've judged [00:31:00] a competition, someone will come and find me afterwards and say, did you understand what that was about?

I was trying to say this, and it's like, well, I didn't see that, but that's not my fault. You know, it's, it's down to you to lead me pictorially to. Whatever it is you're trying to show. Same with all judges, all viewers, clients. It doesn't really matter. It's the author's job, not the judges. So at the end of that, you then move on to whatever's the next criteria.

So you know, you assess these things bit by bit, and by the way, every judge will do it in a slightly different order. There'll be written down in an order. But each judge would approach it in a different manner. For me, typically it's about emotional connection more than anything else, it's about the emotion.

I love that genuine, authentic connection of a person in the image. To me, the viewer. I will always go there if, if it's a portrait or a wedding or fashion image, if there's a person in it or a dog, I suppose, [00:32:00] then I will look for that authenticity, that, that visceral, it feels like they're looking at me or I'm having a dialogue with them.

That's my particular hot button, but every judge has their room and that's how you approach it.

So when it comes to a photograph in the end, you don't really have anything other than light when you think about it, right?

That's, you pick up a camera, it's got a sensor, it's got film, it's got a lens on the front, and a shutter stopping light coming, or it goes through the lens, but the, the shutter stops it hitting a sensor. And at some point you commit light to be recorded. And it's the light that describes the image.

There's nothing else. It's not something you can touch or hear, it's just light. And of course light is everything. I think, I think the term pho photography or photograph is a mix of a couple of words, and it's a relatively recent idea. I think [00:33:00] it was Victorian and it's, isn't it light and art photographic or photograph, um.

So that's what it is. It's capturing light and creating a reaction from it. So the quality of light is possibly the most important thing. There is too much of it, and you're gonna have blown highlights, nasty white patches on your prints, too little of it. You're gonna have no detail in the shadows and a lot of noise or grain, whether it's film or whether it's off your sensor.

And then there's the shape of the light. The color of the light, and it doesn't really matter whether it's portrait, wedding, landscape, product, avant garde, it's light that defines things. It's light that can break an image. So with portraiture, for instance,

we tend to talk about. Sculpting or dimensionality of light. We tend to talk about the shape of the subject. We talk about flattering light. We talk about hard and soft light, and all of these things [00:34:00] mean something. This isn't the podcast to talk about those in detail, but that's what we're looking for.

We are looking for has the light created a sense of shape, a sense of wonder, a sense of narrative. Does the lighting draw your eye towards the subject? And when you get to the subject, is it clear that the lighting is effective and by effective, usually as a portrait photographer anyway. I mean flattering.

But you might be doing something with light that's counterintuitive, that's making the subject not flattered. That's maybe it's for a thriller style thing, or maybe it's dark and moody. Harsh, as long as in tune with the story as we are seeing it, then the lighting is assessed in that vein. So we've seen some incredible beauty shots over the past couple of days where the lighting sculpted the face.

It had damaged ality, but it was soft. There were no hard shadows, there were no [00:35:00] blown highlights. The skin, it was clear that the texture of the skin, the light, it caught the texture. So we knew exactly what that would be. It had. Captured the shape. So the way the gens or shadows ripple around a body or a face tell you its shape.

They haven't destroyed the shape. It's it's catch shape, but it hasn't unnecessarily sculpted scars or birthmarks or spots, you know? And that's how lighting works. So you look for this quality, you look for control, you look for the author, knowing what they're doing. With landscapes, typically it's, it is very rare, in my opinion, for a landscape.

To get a good score if it isn't shot at one end of the day or the other. Why? Well, typically, at those points of the day, the light from the sun is almost horizontal. It rakes across the frame, and you get a certain quality to the way the shadows are thrown. The way the [00:36:00] light, sculpts hills, buildings, clouds, leaves, trees, the way it skips off water, whether it's at the beginning of the day or the end of the day.

It's quite unusual though we do see them for an amazing photograph of escape to be taken at midday. But you can see how it could be if you have the sun directly overhead, because that has a quality all of its own. And you know, if when an author has gone to the effort of being in the right place to shoot vertical shadows with a direct overhead son, well maybe that's so deliberate that the, the judges will completely appreciate that and understand the story.

So it's looking for these things and working out. Has the lighting been effective in telling the story? We think the author was trying to tell? Lighting is at the heart of it.

So when we've been through every criteria, whatever they are, lighting, composition, color, narrative, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, [00:37:00] we've assessed every image, hundreds of them. We've had challenges, we've had conversations. We have a big pile of prints that have made it over the line. To whatever is your particular association scoring, whether it's merit or bronze or whatever.

The puzzle isn't quite complete at that stage because there is of course, a slight problem and that problem is time. So if you imagine judging a section of images might take a couple of hours to do 70 prints, 60, 70 prints might take longer than that. In fact, it might take the best part of an afternoon.

During that time. There's every chance the scores will wander. And the most obvious time is if a category spans something like a lunch break. We try to make sure categories don't do that. We try to complete categories before going for a break. We always try to be continuous, but [00:38:00] you've still got fatigue.

You've got the judges rotating. So all of these things are going on. It sometimes it depends what images come up in what order could conceivably affect the scoring. For instance there's an image that came up this year where I think probably I was the judge that felt the strongest about it. There was something about this particular image that needed talking about, and so when it came up and it was scores that I raised a challenge and my heart rate, the minute the print hit the stand, my heart rate climbed through the roof.

It was. Something about it that just connected with me. And then when I explored the image on the lights, on the light box, to me, there was very little that was technically holding it back. There were a couple of bits, but nothing that I felt warranted a lower score. And so I raised a [00:39:00] challenge. I said my point, I went through it in detail.

I asked the other judges to consider it. From my viewpoint, they gave their views as to why they hadn't. But each of them understood where I was coming from and unlike the challenge I talked about earlier where no one changed their mind on this one, they did on this one. They also saw things that I saw when we went through it.

But at the end of the process, the image was got a higher score, which is great, but. I didn't feel that I could judge the next image fairly because whatever came in, my heart rate was still battering along after seeing this one particular image. And that happens sometimes. It's not common, but I felt I needed to step off the panel before the next image came up.

Which I did in work, working with the chair and the team. I stepped off for a couple of prints before stepping back on [00:40:00] just to let my eye settle and let myself get back into the right zone. But during the day, the zone changes. The way you change your perception of the images, as the images come through is so imperceptible, imperceivable, imperceptible.

One of those two words is so tiny that you don't notice if there's a slight drift. And so there's every opportunity for an image to score a couple of points lower or a couple of points higher than it possibly could have done. If it had been seen at another point in the day. Maybe it had been, maybe if the image was seen after a series of not so strong images, maybe it would get a higher score.

Or of course, the other way round. Maybe after seeing a series of really, really powerful, impactful images that came up, maybe it scored be slightly diminished. Both of those can be true. And so it's really important that we redress that any possible imbalance and every competition I've ever done has a final round.

And the [00:41:00] way this is done is that we take the highest scoring images, top five, top 10, depending on the competition, and we line them up. And all of the judges now, not just the judges who are the five on the panel, all seven judges. Get an opportunity to bring each image back onto a light box if they wish, if they haven't seen them already.

Because remember, some of those images may not have been assessed by the, well. It cannot have been assessed by all seven of the judges, so there's always gonna be at least two judges who haven't seen that image or seeing it for the first time as a judge. So we bring them back, we look at them, and then we rank them using one of numerous voting mechanisms where we all vote on what we think are the best images and gradually whittle it down until we're left with a ranked order for that category.

We have a winner, a second, a third, a fourth, sometimes all the way down to 10 in order, depending on the competition. And that's the fairest way of doing it, because it means, okay, during the judging, [00:42:00] that image got, I dunno, 87. But when we now baseline it against a couple of images that got 90 something, when we now look at it, we realize that that image probably should have got a 90 as well.

We're not gonna rescore it, the score stands, but what we are gonna do is put it up into there and vote on it as to whether it actually, even though it got slightly lower, score, is the winning image for the category. And every competition does something similar just to redress any fluctuations to, to flatten out time.

It takes time outta the equation because now for that category, all seven judges are judging the winner at the same time, and that's really important. We do that for all the categories, and then at the end of that process, we bring back all of the category winners and we vote on which one of those. Wins the competition.

Now, not every competition has an overall winner, but for the one we've just done for the print masters, for the BIPP print masters, there is an overall winner. And so we set them all out [00:43:00] and we vote collectively as a winner on the winner. And then, oh, we rank them 1, 2, 3, 4, or whatever. Um, really we're only picking a winner, but we also have to have some safety nets because what happens if for instance.

Somebody unearths a problem with an image. And this has happened, sadly, this has happened a couple of times in my career where a photographer has entered an image that's not compliant with the rules but hasn't declared it. And it's always heartbreaking when it does happen, but we have to have a backup.

So we always rank one, two, and three. So that's some backups, and that's the process. That's how we finish everything off. We have finished, we've got all the categories judged, the category winners judged, and then the overall one, two, and three sorted as well.

at the end of the process? I can't speak for every judge. I can speak for me, I feel, I think three things. Exhaustion. It's really hard to spend 48 hours or longer [00:44:00] assessing images one by one, by one by one, and making sure that you are present and paying attention to every detail of every image.

And you're not doing an author or an image a disservice. You pay each image or you give each image, you pay each image the due attention it deserves. I feel exhilaration. There's something energizing about assessing images like this. I know it's hard to explain, but there's something in the process of being alongside some of the best photographers that you've ever met, some photographers that you admire more than any others, not just as photographers, but as human beings.

The nicest people, the smartest people, the most experienced people, the most eloquent people. There's something in that. So there's this [00:45:00] exhilaration. You are exhausted, but there's an exhilaration to it. And then finally, and I don't know if every photographer feels this or every judge feels this, I do.

Which is massively insecure, I think. Can't think of the right words for it. There must be one. But I come away, much like when you've been out on the beers and you worry about all the things you've said, it's the same process. There was that image I didn't give enough credit for. There was this image I was too generous on.

There were the things I said in a challenge when it gets a little bit argumentative or challenging. 'cause the clues in the title, you know, maybe I pushed too hard, maybe I didn't push hard enough. There are images you've seen that you wished you'd taken and you feel like. I'm not good enough. There's an insecurity to it too, and those are the three things I think as you leave the room, it's truly [00:46:00] energizing.

Paradoxically, it's truly exhausting, but it's also a little bit of a head mush in that you do tend to come, or I do tend to come away a little bit insecure about. All the things that have gone on over the two days prior, and I've done this a long time. I've been judging for, I dunno, 15, 16, 17 years. And I've got used to those feelings.

I've got used to coming away worrying.

I'm used to the sense of being an underachiever, I suppose, and it's a wonderful , set of emotions that I bring home. And every time I judge. I feel better for it. I feel more creative. I feel more driven. I feel more determined. I feel like my eyes have been opened to genres [00:47:00] of photography, for types of imagery, for styles of posing or studio work that I've never necessarily considered, and I absolutely adore it every single second.

So at the end of that, I really hope I've described or created a picture of what it's like to be a judge for this one. I haven't tried to explain the things we saw that as photographers as authors, you should think about when you are entering. I'm gonna do that in a separate podcast. I've done so many of those, but this one was specifically like, what does it feel like to be a judge?

Why do we do it? I mean, we do it for a million reasons. Mostly we do it because people helped us and it's our turn to help them. But every photographer has a different reason for doing it. It's the most joyful process. It's the most inspiring process and I hope you've got a little bit of that from the podcast.

So [00:48:00] on that happy note, I'm gonna wrap up and I'm gonna go and finish my glass of whiskey which I'm quite excited about if I'm honest. 'cause I did, it's been sitting here beside me for an hour and I haven't drunk any of it. I do hope you're all doing well. I know winter is sort of clattering towards us and the evenings are getting darker, at least for my listeners in the north and the hemisphere.

Don't forget. If you want more information on portrait photography or our workshops we've announced all of the upcoming dates or the next set of upcoming dates. Please head across to mastering portrait photography.com and go to the workshop section. I love our workshops and we've met so many.

Just lovely people who've come to our studio. And we've loved being alongside them, talking with them, hopefully giving a bit of inspiration, certainly taking a little bit of inspiration, if I'm honest, because everyone turns up with ideas and conversations. Uh, we would love to see you there. The workshops are all are all there on the website and the workshop section.

You can also, if you wish, buy a signed copy of the book from mastering portrait photography.com. Again, just go to the [00:49:00] shop and you'll see it there on the top. Amazon has them for sale too. It is great. Amazon typically sells them for less than we do, but we have a fixed price. We have to buy them from the wholesaler at a particular price, whereas Amazon can buy many, many more than we can, so they get a better deal if I'm honest.

However, if you want my paw print in there, then you can order it from us and it's supports a photographer and it's really lovely to hear from you. When you do, uh, one thing, I'd love to ask anyone who has bought the updated edition of the book, if you are an Amazon customer. Please could you go on to amazon.com and leave us a review?

It's really powerful when you do that, as long as it's a good review. If it's a rubbish review, just email me and tell me what I could have done differently, and I'll email you back and tell you, tell you why I didn't. But if it's a half decent review, a nice review. Please head over to Amazon. Look for mastering portrait photography, the new version of the book, and leave us a review.

It's really important particularly in the first couple of [00:50:00] weeks that it's been on sale. Uh, it would be really, really helpful if you did that. And on that happy note, I wish you all well. I've grabbed my glass of whiskey and I'm gonna wrap up and whatever else you do. Until next time, be kind to yourself.

Take care.

Ten years, 50,000+ copies, four languages, and about a million stories later… the second edition of Mastering Portrait Photography is here. Sarah flips the mic and grills me about why we did a new edition, what changed (spoiler: basically everything but one image), how mirrorless and AI have shifted the craft, and why a tiny chapter on staying creative might be the most important two pages I’ve ever written. There’s a Westie called Dodi, a cover star called Dory, and a street scene in La Boca that still makes me grin.

Enjoy!
Links:

Signed Copy of Mastering Portrait Photography, New Edition - https://masteringportraitphotography.com/resource/signed-copy-mastering-portrait-photography-new-edition/

 

Transcript:
Sarah: So welcome back to the Mastering Portrait Photography podcast and today's a special one. Hi, I'm Sarah, and I'm the business partner of Paul at Paulwilkinsonphotography.co.uk and also his wife too. Now, you might already know him as the voice behind this podcast, but today I'm gonna get the rare pleasure of turning the microphone around and asking him the questions. So Paul, it's been 10 years since the first edition of mastering portrait photography hit the shelves, and with selling over 50,000 copies, multiple reprints and translation into four languages, it's safe to say it's had a bit of an impact, but as we all know, photography doesn't stand still and neither do you. So today we're diving into the brand new second edition. So Hello Paul.

Paul: Hello.

It feels weird saying hello to my wife in a way that makes it sound like we've only just met.

Sarah: Mm. Maybe, maybe.

Paul: The ships that pass in the night.

Sarah: Yes. So I thought we'd start with talking about the, the first version. You know, how did it come about? A bit of the origin story about it. Um, and I'll leave that with you.

Paul: Well, of course Confusingly, it's co-authored with another Sarah, um, another photographer. And the photographer and brilliant writer called Sarah Plater, and she approached us actually, it wasn't my instigation, it was Sarah's, and she had written another book with another photographer on the Foundations of Photography. Very popular book. But she wanted to progress and had been approached by the publisher to create Mastering Portrait Photography. This thing that we now have become used to didn't exist 10 years ago, and when she approached us, it was because she needed someone who could demonstrate photographic techniques that would live up to the title, mastering portrait photography. And we were lucky enough to be that photographer. And so that first book was really a, a sort of trial and error process of Sarah sitting and interviewing me over and over and over and over and over, and talking about the techniques that photographers use in portraiture.

Some of it very sort of over the sort of cursory look, some of it in depth, deep dives, but all of it focusing on how to get the very best out of your camera, your techniques, and the people in front of you. And that's how it came about. I mean, little did I know 10 years ago we'd be sitting here where we are with Mastering Portrait Photography as a brand in and of itself.This is the Mastering Portrait Photography Podcast

Yes,

because the book sold so well.

Sarah: And did you expect it to do as well as it

Paul : Oh, I'm a typical photographer, so, no, of course I didn't, you know, I kind of shrugged and thought it'd be all right. Um, and, and in some ways, because you have to boil it down into, I think there's a 176 pictures or there, there were in the first book or somewhere around there, a couple of hundred pages.

There's this sense that there's no way you can describe everything you do in that short amount of space. And so instead of, and I think this is true of all creatives, instead of looking what we achieve. We look at the things we haven't done. And I talk about this on the podcast regularly, the insecurity, you know, how to, how to think like a scientist.

That's something that will come up later when we talk about the new version of the book. But no, I, I thought it would be reasonably well accepted. I thought it was a beautiful book. I thought Sarah's words were brilliant. I thought she'd captured the, the processes that I was talking about in a way that clarified them because I'm not known for my clarity of thought.

You know, you know, I am who I am, I'm a creative, um, and actually what happened was the minute it was launched, the feedback we got has been amazing. And of course then it's gone on to be translated into Italian. A couple of different Italian versions for National Geographic. It's been translated into Korean, it's been translated into German, it's been translated into Chinese.

Um, and of course, technically it's been translated into American English. And, and one of the reviews that made me laugh, we've got amazing reviews on Amazon, but there is one that kind of made me laugh, but also upset me slightly, is that both Sarah and myself are British authors. Using English uk, UK English, but for the international market right from the get go the book was using American spellings,

Sarah: right?

Paul : We didn't know that was what was gonna happen. We provided everything in UK English and of course it went out in with American English as its base language. Its originating language. Um, and that's one of the biggest criticisms we

Sarah: got.

Paul - Studio Rode Broadcaster V4 (new AI): And when that's the criticism you're getting that people are a bit fed up that it's in American English and apologies to my US friends, of which I have many.

Um, it was the only one that really. I don't like that. So I thought, well, it must be all right. And so for 10 years it's been selling really well. book. I never knew it'd be in different languages. Um, it was in the original contract that if the publisher wanted to do that, they could.

And really, I only found out it was an Italian when I started getting messages in Italian from people who'd bought the book in Italy. And then of course, we found out. So it's been a remarkable journey and. I don't think I've been as proud of something we've done as I have of the book. I mean, me and you spent hours pouring over pictures and talking about stories.

Sarah had to then listen to me.

Sarah: Yes.

Paul: Mono, sort of giving these sort of diatribes on techniques and things we do. Um, you know, and I think, I think it's a remark. I, well, I still think it's a remarkable achievement. I'm really proud of it.

Sarah: Yes. Did, did you think the second edition would, would happen or, um, or how did it come about?

Paul: No, not really. Because if you remember, we did a sort of interim update, which was just off the ISBN, so the same ISBN, same book number, but we'd been asked if there was anything that needed tweaking minor word changes, those kinds of things.

And I assumed not really being, you know, that time experienced with this stuff is that was. Was a second edition, it was basically a reprint. So I sort of assumed that was the end of it. And then, um, we were contacted the end of last year, um, to say that with the success of the book over the past decade, would we consider, uh, refreshing it properly refreshing it, a new updated edition because of course there's lots of things that change over time.

Um. And it's, it was worth having another look at it. So no, I didn't expect it, but it was an absolute joy when the email came in

It must have been. It's, it's one of those things that's so lovely when other people appreciate it and know that, um, it would be really good to have a, have another go at it and, uh, see what's changed.

Sarah: So it kind of brings me onto what, what have you changed in it? What's, what are the new, the new bits that are in the second edition? Or was it even that from the first edition? You, you knew that there were things you'd love to include?

Paul: Well, in a decade, so much changes. I. The equipment is the most obvious. You know, there's a chapter at the beginning on Kit, so you know, one of these dilemmas with books. I think again, we took advice from the publisher as to what do you include in a book? And the publisher were really keen and have stayed really keen that there's a chapter on the kit at the beginning.

Um, and apparently that just helps a very particular part of the market sell. So that's fair enough. No problem with that. It's quite fun talking about technology. I don't mind it. Um, but of course that technology's evolved, so we had to update all of that to reflect the fact that 10 years ago we were just beginning to talk about the advent of mirrorless cameras, but they were nowhere near the quality of a digital SLR, for instance.

Well, now mirrorless is the professional choice. Everything has gone mirrorless because it's got fewer moving parts. The sensors have increased in, um, sensitivity to focusing, you know, there's a million reasons why that's happened. So of course we've updated all of the technology. I think more importantly, certainly from my point of view is in those 10 intervening years, I've changed every picture.

Our clients, the techniques, the. Post-production, the thought processes, um, even down to the fact that with mirrorless cameras, you can actually shoot in a slightly different way. I mean, I'm a traditionalist in many ways. I grew up with a film camera. Yes. So, you know, metering either using a meter or very careful control.

Because your dynamic range is pretty limited. Um, maybe the fact that you would focus on a point and then wait for whatever it is that's moving through it, to move through it and take your, take your picture. Um, these were the kind of techniques, you know, lock your focus repose when I started, even even A-D-S-L-R, you know, I'll give you a really good example on how the technology has helped, though.

It's not actually part of this book, but it's a, it's a really good illustrative point. Um, technology isn't the be all and end all of photography. What goes on in your head is what matters, but the technology is the enabler. And I work with the hearing dogs every week. We photograph running dogs all the time and with the DSLRs I was using, it would just take four goes, maybe five goes to get that perfect moment where the dog is spot perfect in focus.

It's airborne, its paws are off the floor. Everything about it is absolutely right. Four or five goes, you know, because I'm shooting at maybe 10 frames a second. The focusing is more or less keeping up because of course, every time you take a picture, the mirror slaps up and the focusing then has to predict where the dog might have ended up.

It's not doing, it's not tracking it at that point, and then you move to mirrorless. Um, and the Z9 that I use now, the Nikon is an unbelievable piece of kit. It locks onto the dog. I can shoot at 20 frames a second. Um, and one of those shots is invariably the shot I'm looking for. And, and that sounds like I'm cheating in some ways, but when you are a professional photographer, your job is to do the very best for your client.

And so instead of spending an inordinate, inordinate amount, it's not easy for me to say a very long time. Um. You know, trying to get the right shot. Now I can do it very quickly and move on to another shot so we can provide a wider variety to our clients. And that's true with running children too. Yes. So the technology has changed and the techniques have changed with it.

Um, now you're seeing on the back of your camera or through the viewfinder exactly the image. Not a facsimile of it, not a mirror. Prism view of it, you're seeing precisely what you're gonna capture. Um, and that gives you a huge amount of confidence in the shot and a huge amount of control too. You can really fine tune exactly how you want the exposure to be.

For instance, you know, you don't have to worry about, is that right? Let's must check the histogram afterwards. You can check the histogram, live in the viewfinder and all these little bits, just make your job different. They, you connect with the shot in a different way. You connect with a client in a different way, and that's the tech side.

But I've also, you know, I, in 10 years, I'm 10 years older. You know, in some ways I'm 10 years faster. In other ways, I'm 10 years slower. You know, the cameras are quicker, my shots are quicker, my knees are slower. Um, and it's a different perspective on life. I also teach a lot. The podcast, the book itself, the first edition of the book, led us to the podcast and the website where we run workshops and everything else.

So all of this cumulative knowledge, when you look back at the old book, and while I'm still massively proud of it, the new edition was a wonderful opportunity to sit down and say, what would I like, how would I like to be represented this time?

Yes,

and it's a much more grown up approach, I think. I mean, I, I wasn't a kid back then, but this time around because the book was successful, instead of providing 10 pictures for every slot, I provided the picture I want, in that slot.

Right?

And so the book is much closer to how I would like it to be as a photographer. Every picture. Now, I could tell you a story about every single picture, every single client, and having the luxury of success on the first version gave me the luxury of being able to do more of what I wanted in this version.

This is much more reflective, I think. Of me personally. Yes. And so I've, I've loved it. It's absolutely, it's such a, a lovely process to go through.

Sarah: So how many pictures have been changed between the two versions?

Paul: All bar one.

Sarah: bar one. How intriguing. So will you tell us what the one is, or is that

Paul: can, you can go and find that out for yourself.

Yeah, so there's one single image that hasn't been changed. There's single image that hasn't been

but every other image has has changed from the first edition.

Uh, just a caveat to that, of course, some of the kit pictures, uh, 'cause they were generic, they've stayed the same. But every portrait,

Wow.

every single portrait except for one, has been changed.

Sarah: And how did you go about choosing those pictures? 'cause I can imagine, you know, if you're starting effectively with a blank canvas for where the images have gotta go, uh, how on earth did you do that

Paul: Um, slowly the publisher will tell you, uh. The thing to you have to remember though, is that this is an updated edition.

Yes.

And that was the contract. It was not a complete start again. So, although I had the opportunity to change every picture, every picture had to fit into an almost identical space because they weren't gonna redesign it.

Right. It's updated edition and we have to be clear about that. So part of the puzzle was not just, which pictures do I want to illustrate, which point.

It was, which pictures in the same shape previous do I want to illustrate? I mean, there's some wiggle room in there, but the designers did not want to do a full redesign. That was not what we were contracted for. Um, obviously the words were being updated too. And both Sarah and myself, um, I mean, since the first book I now write for magazines and online articles and things all the time, I write for all sorts of photography stuff.

Um, and so actually both Sarah and myself wrote words this time round. Um, but nonetheless, we couldn't change too much. We could bring it up to date, but there, there were still bits that, you know, if I was being truly honest, there are things that I think in the past 10 years have become less relevant. And things, it would've been nice to have put some different stuff in, but that again, this is an updated edition, um, not a complete from the ground up rewrite.

So actually I sat down and I looked at all of the, um, chapters and the words that we'd written in the first edition and thought about what we were trying to illustrate and went back to sort of basics really, and where I already had pictures in the portfolio. Um, we used pictures of great clients, interesting light, interesting locations, interesting techniques where there are certain things where, I'm not sure, the first time round, um, the illustrations of them were as good as I, as strong as I would've liked.

I shot them again here in the studio, so things like the lighting pattern. You know, I have, I've talked about them for 10 years, these lighting patterns. So it was a really nice chance to sit Katie, who works for us in the studio, uh, to sit Katie in front of the camera and say, right, this is what we're gonna do.

And I worked every lighting pattern and redrew every diagram to make that absolutely on point, which I think the first time round, while they are very, very good. They're not what I would've liked them to be this time round. So there was that side of it too. And then of course, and I'm sure you're gonna come onto it, there's a couple of, well, there's a new chapter in there which did give us a chance to explore something a little bit different.

Um, so yeah, it was just a long process of finding pictures that if I'm gonna put my name to it, are the ones that I would like. Yes. And it's not always the best picture. It's not always the competition winners. they're in there. They are in there. Of course they're in there. Um, but I think this time round, um, I really enjoyed reminiscing.

I think some of the pictures in there, they're all beautiful pictures, don't get me wrong. But some of the people I picked to be in them are people because actually that was a moment that I will remember for the rest of my life for all sorts of reasons. And I think the, the strongest example of that is our cover shot is Dory now.

The story of Dory. That sounds really weird. The story of Dory? photo. Dory. Story of photograph. Oh yeah, my

you met Dory? Or should we go with

I dunno if the story of Dory that's like, sounds like a children's book. That'd be a great chance to write a children's book. So Sarah and I were having dinner. Dory was working in the restaurant that, uh, we are having dinner in.

Um, I laughed to Sarah and said, I think, um, Dory would photograph beautifully. Sarah said, we'll, go and ask her. And I asked her and she said, no. She absolutely said no, categorically. And I said, okay. Then I wrote our email address, sorry, I wrote our web address. Uh, on the back of a, of a napkin and handed it to her.

I said, look, you know, if you're not interested, that's fine, but have a look at my work. Um, and this was after the first edition of mastering portrait photography, and my idea was for Dorie to come to the studio and we'd film some stuff where we photographed her and use it for information, stuff for people who read the book and maybe create some YouTube videos and things.

Um, anyway, at four o'clock in the morning, got an email back from Dory saying, actually, I've just looked at your work. Yes, please. And Dory has gone on to be someone we've worked with fairly regularly. Um, mostly, um, because she's just the nicest person in the world, but also she's supremely photogenic and you bring those two things together and they're the kind of people I love to work with.

I love to celebrate. Photography with, so her picture, one of those pictures I shot in that session is the cover shot in the book and she features later on as well. 'cause she's come back with her husband and her kids and it's just a delight. And then there, you know, there are people from all over the world.

Um, and so there's a lot of memories in there for both me and for you I

Yes,

Um, and it was, uh, just a pleasure to go through it. Oh, and the other thing is every single shot is shot since we published the first edition. So I did limit us to the past 10

everything is limited to what, what you've captured in the last 10 years?

Yeah. Yes. Because

figured that, um, if you're gonna do an updated edition, then, although there were pictures in the first version of the book, I would've loved to have had in there that never made it. Why don't we start from that point and move forwards?

Other than the one

Other than

other than the one other than,

one

Sarah: so you've, you've talked a little bit about how you've changed and that's been reflected in the book. You've talked a little bit about how the technology has changed, but probably one of the biggest changes has been post-production, um, the introduction of, of ai. So is that reflected in the book,

Paul: Yeah, of course it is. Um, the post-production chapter, um, I mean, the thing with post-production is that's a volume of books in and of itself. Uh, we put it into the book Sarah and myself, because I think it was important to note that an image isn't generally finished in camera. It's finished when it's finished.

And this is true for film, by the way. This is not news, you know? Um, and it's for as long as film has been shot, transparency's and negatives. People have been doing a certain amount of post-production on them afterwards in their development tanks. Um, or whether they're doing hand toning or something is', this isn't new for me.

I think you're about halfway there. Now, the second half might be a very short half, but it's almost certainly gonna evolve, at the very least, um, brightening controlling your tones and cropping. Okay. Maybe a bit of sharpening if that's your thing. So we put that chapter in just to make the point that there is a finishing stage.

That was 10 years ago. In those 10 years, everything has changed. Yes.

Yes.

You know, even if I just kept it to the Photoshopping that we had in the first edition, all of that is different. I. And of course AI has now arrived. Um, I mean, it's a precocious child of a technology at the moment, but it's growing up really very fast and it's gonna affect us in every single element of us as creatives of, of us as business owners.

There's, there's no part of our work. Even. Even the people that say I don't believe in AI are using cameras that have AI in them. You know, there's no way of escaping it. It's here with us and you can fight it if you want. And there are bits of it that I'm not that comfortable with. Certainly some of the training, the way they did it on images, without any acknowledgement of copywriting things, it's problematic.

But in the end, it's here, it's now, and if you don't embrace it, the people who are in your market as a professional competing with you. Are embracing it so there's no getting around it. So yeah, there's a part of our post-production now talks about specifically EVOTO.AI, which is the app that we use.

There's others as well re Bloom and a few others that do a very similar thing. Um, and we've put it in there. Again, not as this is what AI does, but for make, to make people aware that AI is now part of the puzzle. Use it, don't use it. And that's completely your choice. The same as it is with Photoshop. But it's a good place to just remind people.

That this is the direction of travel for a good chunk of the industry. So yeah, we've changed that quite a lot.

Sarah: And a section at the end. Is it

Paul: my favorite section? Yes. this

Sarah: a, this was a request from you to add this in.

Paul: Yes, yes.

Um, there's a, one of the things with doing this as a job, and it's not just a risk, it really does happen, is you find yourself.

Sort of burnt out isn't the right word for it, really, or the right phrase for it. But you find yourself same old, same old, same old. You get good at stuff, you get known for stuff. People ask you to do that stuff. You do more of it. You, you're still good at it, but eventually you start to find yourself just a little bit flat.

Um, and it happens all the time. And so I put a chapter and I asked the publishers if we could wiggle some stuff around and make some space to put one specific chapter in. It's not a long chapter, but to me it might be the most important chapter in there. It's about staying creative. It's just little techniques, little ideas for staying on top of your game, thinking of new things, being a creative.

And, and being a creative is something you have to work at. You can't just, you don't just invent ideas. You have to be open to seeing things and thinking things and trying things, experimenting, working with different people, having mentoring. These are all the facets that I wanted to just in a very short chapter, 'cause we could only squeeze in a couple of pages.

But it's the chapter that I think I am the most proud of

Sarah: Yes. And knowing you as well as I do, you know, it's part of my challenge in the business is making sure that you keep motivated and keep being creative. So I, I know how important it's, and how we have to put shoots in the diary and, and do things that are just for you, for no other reason. Just than just to let you play. So I, I can see how important that is.

Paul: Yeah. I'm, I'm aware of just how much cotton wool you wrap me in and I can feel it building as well. I always know when I'm not firing on all cylinders, because you start to sort of wrap cotton wool around me and start to think about putting it in other things that we need to do, or just a break to get away for a week.

You know, there's those things. It's really hard. It's hard being a creative, as in it's hard to be a creative a hundred percent of the time, and b, creative a hundred percent of the time. The, the, you know, being called a creative is one thing, but actually being creative is a process of invention and experimenting and doing things that you haven't done before.

That's the point of being creative. Um, and so, yeah, I'm always aware when I'm clearly starting to feel a bit frazzled because I can feel you starting to. Talk about doing other things.

Sarah: So what I didn't realize is what you said earlier, that the, all the images have all been taken since the last book. Um, and they're from clients we've had all around the world as well.

So I wondered if it would be. Nice to pull out a couple of our favorite images. Um, I sort of going on from your comments about staying creative. One that jumps out to me is when, um, Vivian and Dody came to the studio and, you know, this was a, a lady who came in with her West Highland tert. So Westy Westy, it's a

white west. Highland, ter.

And, um, we did some beautiful shots indoors, outdoors, um, having lots of fun. And then you built this, uh, amazing scene, um, which is including in the, included in the posing chapter. Do you wanna just explain and tell me a little bit about that one? Yeah. Um.

Paul: Um, you know, Dodie, sorry.

Vivian had emailed Dodie didn't email, obviously Doty's

Do's dog,

Vivian Vivian emailed to say she wanted a shoot with her dog. And I kind of, I say I distinctly remember the email. I remember what she said in the email, which is that she couldn't find another photographer who photographed the owner with their dog.

Now, I dunno how hard Vivian looked. I'm not, I'm sure there's a lot of photographers listening to this that photograph dogs with their owners and I judge a lot now as a, as a judge and as a coach. So I know it to. Out there. But anyway, she landed on us and I'm thrilled that she did Vivian and, uh, Dodie turned at the studio.

And Vivian is just beautiful. She's elegant. She has a real sort of gentle way about her, uh, and this beautiful little West Highland ter, which was for the first 10 minutes, I have to be honest in now. Backstory, my Nan had repeatedly West Highland Terriers. My Nan repeatedly did not train her. Westie, my Nan's dogs repeatedly bit us all of us as kids, as teenagers, as adults.

Even my dad would like shut the door and run because this dog would go for him. And so when she turned up with this little Westie, I must admit I backed away. However, Dodi, just like Vivian, was gentle and calm and just followed her around and, and he would sit. In the studio just looking at her while we worked, if it was shots for her on her own.

And then when she scooped him up or we tried to do something with him, he was so patient and so well behaved. So I've got this incredible client who wants to do these shots, and at the end of the shoot sometimes the greatest privilege you get is to say to someone, how long have you got? And if they've got a little bit more time.

What you can do is say, would you mind just trying a few bits with us? So we cleaned the studio out. It's a white, the, the dog was a white dog. Vivian had a light colored outfit and this kind of fair, and she was just, it. It struck me that we could do something interesting with the white walls of the studio, the white floor of the studio, the white posing blocks that I've had probably for 20 years here.

And so I did a couple of things and we, we shot some different combinations and then in the post-production STA stage, I built a model of our studio in 3D in blender, it with blocks exactly the same. And then I can create almost any scene I wanted around this shot that's right in the middle of Dodi looking up at Vivian.

Um, and it was one of those shoots that, I mean, every shoot in here, there's a story similar to this where I could tell you it's a shoot I'll remember forever. Um, and it was, and it was just a, a real luxury and, and just, you know, I dunno if Vivian listens to the podcast, but hello. Um, and Vivian's also very kindly sourced books from China for us.

Yeah.

yes. It's

hard to get hold of some of these things when you are not in country. So we're still in touch with her very much. He's a lovely client.

Another one that, um, oh, actually there's quite a few in the book from where we work as master photographers with Crystal cruises and so, um.

Sarah: We've got this lovely line where we talk about the book, where is it From Venice to Vietnam and Haddenham to Hawaii. Yeah. But, uh, one of my favorite shoots that's included is Christine, when we were in Brena Aires, and actually this is from this year when we were in South America and there's quite a few people that we borrowed on the ship to get some pictures. And also what a lovely opportunity.

I think it's in locations. Um. Where there is it and where was it? It was in Le Bocca. Wasn't Itca Le Bocca with Christine? Do you

Well, a little bit about that one? What's

Paul: It has been a, a real luxury for us in the intervening 10 years. So a lot happened in 20 14, 20 15. And one of the things that happened around the time of the book was they were asked to work with Crystal Cruises, a company that provided the photography to them.

Interviewed myself and Sarah. Sorry, us too.

It's

weird talking, made a third person and giving it right here. Um, interviewed us as a team and ever since then we've been traveling the world with them grading high-end portraits for these beautiful international clients. Um, and this time round the deadline.

Not the instigation, but the deadline for the book came up while we were working for about seven weeks around South America on the cruise. So I already had earmarked images from previous cruises, previous visits to different places. But when I was on the ship, there were a couple of people, um, that really leapt out just.

Ship. And one of the great luxuries when you have something like a book or you like you've become well known as a photographer, is you can say to people, would you mind stepping in to allow us to take some photographs? So there's a couple of people from the crew where you have to get permission to work with the crew.

Um, there's, um. Uh, Barbara is one of the team on there. Uh, say Hi is one of the people on there, um, who were crew members that we just loved the way they were with us. They made our lives wonderful. And so we photographed them specifically to put them in the book. Um, and then there's a client of ours, which is the one you've alluded to, which is Christine Now.

We met Christine at the end of another shoot, and this is. Um, I mean, remember this is still the Mastering Portrait Photography podcast, and so it's always worth remembering some of the things that you can do as photographers. This is not just an interview about me in a book, but here's some ideas for you that work.

So on the ship, we had just done a shoot, an amazing shoot, and a lady who was in that shoot was showing her images round the bar to all of her friends on our iPad. Now we were drinking, we were sat and we were sat next to this lovely lady who was very quiet and we'd said hello and had a quick chitchat, but not majorly a long conversation.

When our client handed us back the iPad, Christine, who was the lady who was sitting with us, said, do you mind if I have a look? And I said, yeah, of course. It'd be my pleasure. You know? So she had a look and she said, would you be willing to do that for me? And I said, well, of course we would, you know, this is what we're here for.

Um, and so we arranged to do a couple of different bits. A couple of it is actually two different shoots, but we did a site visit to Le Baca, this area in Buenos Aires. Is that right? Yes. Bueno Aires. Was it? No. Yes. Yes, it was. Bueno

Argentina. Yeah. Thank you. Are

confused. So we, we did a couple of visits to this place in, uh, bueno Aires Laca to go and check it out for different locations.

Uh, myself and you and Keith, who's our client, strictly speaking, who runs the, the photo. Um, company found all these locations and went the following day with Christine to go and explore this really beautiful, touristy area of leer. It's very characterful, it's very hot. Um, very intense actually. There's a lot going on and you do have to have your head on a swivel.

Yes.

it's quite notorious for pickpockets and thefts and so you do have to be careful. So, Sarah, I mean you, sorry, this is really weird. So

I'm

used those to talking on my own. So you and me, we were working as a team with Keith. Christine was not. Christine was stealing sausages from barbecue places and running them down alleyways that probably she shouldn't have been.

Christine

everywhere, but really where we wanted her to be, which was safe and in our site. Um, and if you remember, we kind of, um, we went round a corner. In fact, we were just heading back to the car. We, so Christina had arranged the driver and we'd gone round the corner, haven't we? And we were in this little street.

And I just, I looked over the top of the cars to the street shops, the shop fronts on the other side of the road and thought that would make a great picture because the color of Christine's dress, the color of these shops, the whole scene would just be something interesting. But I'm shooting across the road through cars.

Um, we've got Keith on the other side of the road with her. You are on the side of the road with me. Both of us trying to keep eyes everywhere 'cause we've now stepped out of the touristy bit. We are now in an area where, strictly speaking, you shouldn't be hanging around with a 10,000 pound camera.

Yes.

Um, so I dragged the shutter.

I got, I got everything else. I wanted it and dragged the shutter in a gap between the cars as somebody walked past. And I have this shot of Christine killing herself, laughing, looking at the camera. Um. With somebody walking past and it has this real vibe of a street shot, a candid shot. It's not, it's been staged, but it's one of my favorite shots in the book because it's, to me, every time I look at it, and this is true of your clients too, and when you're listening, the photographers are listening to this.

Remember this every picture, if you've created an experience around it, that picture. We'll hold memories for that client of yours. And it's true for me too. This experience was amazing. We're still in touch with Christine. She's desperate for us to go out and visit her in Texas. Um, but it was such a privilege, such a pleasure.

So much laughter and that every time I open that page in the book, that's what it takes me

it. I

I'm with

I love the colors, I love everything about it. And it's nice that it's such a lovely story too.

crazy story.

Sarah: So who do you think the book is for? Who do you think we'd pick it up and find useful?

Paul: Well, I'm hoping another 50,000 people will be. I've, I don't, I don't have total control over that. Um. It's really this, I think there's something for almost any portrait interested photographer in there. Um, if you are already a pro, you're probably not gonna pay a lot of attention to the kit chapter at the beginning. That won't be your shtick. Um, but there will be stuff on posing and interactions and some of the post-production might be of interest.

Um, if you are ready. You know, a supremely experienced photographer, you might like it simply 'cause the pictures are really beautiful. I still buy photo books because I will pick them up, look at the pictures and think, do you know what? I'm gonna use that idea. I'm gonna meld that into something else I'm doing because I like, I love seeing.

Great photographs. If you are truly a beginner, there's enough in there to get you going. And some of the techniques are a little bit further out there, but mostly it builds on this idea that you have a camera, you have a client, you have your subject, and you're gonna create an experience. And then from that experience, great pictures.

So I think it's broader than possibly the mastering portrait photography title gives it. Um, but it covers a little bit of all bases. And it certainly has enough in there to say, actually there's, there's stuff in there that if you do this, it really is quite, um, sophisticated.

Yes. Do you, we don't know at this stage in terms of whether it'll be translated into other languages that that usually comes a year after, doesn't it? After the, you

last time, say. It was only when I started getting emails in Italian.

Yes. Um,

that I noticed what happened. And we didn't know if you remember that it was in Chinese and Korean

no.

we started to put the marketing together for this book.

Yes. And we asked the publisher AB, in absolute terms, how many copies have you sold?

Yes. And they

back with different language versions that we never knew about. Yeah. So, you know. Been

been a, a journey of discovery,

a journey.

a journey.

Yes. So, yeah, who

knows? I, I really hope they do, uh, create some, uh, different language versions of it.

'cause there's nothing quite like seeing your work in Italian,

Yes. So, And, and Chinese, I think that's the one I find the, the most intriguing.

Sarah: So the book is officially launched next Tuesday, I believe.

Is the 28th. The 28th. Um, so what, what's on the horizon next is what, what are you gonna be doing with the book and

knows? Um, I mean, obviously the first thing we've gotta do is get through the launch of the book.

Yes.

Um, which is exciting. And obviously us two have been walking the studio trying to figure out how to tidy the whole place up. 'cause we haven't done a full on party probably since the last book. No. Or thereabouts.

So we've we're inviting. Everybody who's featured in the book Yeah. Um, to a, a launch at the weekend. Yeah. Um, and we are refreshing all of the pictures in the studio, uh, to reflect the pictures that are in the book as well. And it's just, it'll be such a lovely thing to do and it's, I can't wait to see everything when it's up.

Yeah. So that's, but next week's gonna be a bit fraught

It's 'cause in the middle of all that, I think I've got five shoots to work my way through.

Right. I don't sleep much. I

a challenge.

Yeah. I'm not, I'm

I'm not being super,

thankfully. Um, so there's that. And then, you know, once that gets rolling, of course I go back to our regular job. I'm judging for the British Institute. Professional photographers print competition straight after. So we've got.

A big bash on the Saturday night. Yeah. Uh, for all of our, all the people in the book on the Sunday, we're inviting anybody's around to come and a studio

open day, studio

open day in the afternoon. And then at some point in that afternoon, I have to go all the way up to Preston Salubrious, uh, Preston, to go and begin the process of judging the print competition for the 2025 print masters.

So a lot going on.

And you're gonna be busy signing books as well.

yeah,

It's been a

while since I've had to sit and do a big a book signing, but there's a load of that going on. Yeah. Uh, it's just lovely.

exciting. It really is. Well, I think that just about brings us to the end of everything. So I've enjoyed being on the other side of everything.

Sarah: So I'd just like to say, Paul, thank you ever so much for letting me do that and sitting on the other side of the mic today, um. We have got a limited number of copies here at the studio that Paul can sign, but they will be available at all. Good bookshops, um, with water zones. I think there's some competitions going where they will be with Graphistudio and with.

Um. A professional photo. Yeah.

Yep.

So there's, there's lots of ways for you to get your hands on it and uh, we'd love to know what you think of it and um, especially if you've got the first version and seeing the second version, we'd love some feedback 'cause we are so proud of it. And especially with the pictures in there, and if you can tell us what's that, what's the picture in there that, that haven't been changed? That will be even better.

There's no prize.

So, no, thank you. Thank you very much. Well,

it's a pleasure. And you know what you've gotta say now, don't you? What's

that? If you've enjoyed this podcast, is it? No.

If you've enjoyed this podcast, please head over to mastering portrait photography.com, which is full of articles.

And as it happens, I'm doing all of the behind the scenes diagrams and stories for the images that are in this book. It'll probably take me 10 years to get there, but there's a couple of hundred of those. Uh, and of course, whatever else you do.

be kind to yourself.

Take care guys.