Behind the scene process of a Portraits shoot with Vidhi Thakur
So this is how my typical portrait shoot looks like. I always start early because I love shooting with natural light. and that's the reason why I chose this studio because it gets ample natural light most of the hours of the day.
So this shoot was for an artist. She is a voice artist, and now she is moving from voice to acting. We had never met before the shoot, and we only had some conversation over the phone. For an artist, it's very crucial to show versatile looks,
and her strength to adapt different styles but also look natural and not made up. So we decided to do a couple of looks close to her everyday life. I like when me and my clients know what we want to achieve, and we both are on the same page. and it can take a couple of phone calls of consultation to exchange the ideas and understanding to be sure that what I want to create is what she is actually looking for too, which is very important for me.
Prior consultation give them a better understanding making the whole experience very enjoyable and making them comfortable with my style of work.
I embody myself in all the areas of my shoots. So you will always see me getting involved with makeup and hair, choosing the right colour because I feel that a photographer has to think like a painter.
So each colour that you include in your portrait really matters. When I start, I always start with a very comfortable look, a look that my client can actually relate to because it kind of helps them to open up, warm up to the camera. And also they get familiar with my direction, which kind of makes it easier for the further looks where probably they have to explore a bit more or express a bit more.
I often sit the way my subject is sitting so I can mirror them, and I can reflect back to them what I am doing or sometimes I will just show them the whole flow of changing the body language from one pose to another naturally.
I'm always talking softly. I feel that, when they are into a moment or a pose,I should just use very few words or maybe just hand gestures so I dont lose the connection I could have with the camera. So if I direct too much, it kind of breaks that entire flow and I don't achieve what I'm trying to achieve then. So whenever I start,I always start explaining to them about the kind of hand gestures I use. It kind of makes things really easy for both of us to understand.
I photograph black and white a lot. I make sure that in my entire series,that I'm doing for my client, I always include one black and white, because I feel it kind of brings the whole series together and it kind of uplifts the whole shoot.I have unlearned a lot of things by learning that simplicity and minimalistic look can look very grand and great to eyes.
So if you see all my images, the styling is very simple, the colour palette is very simple, I make sure that I keep the post processing as minimal as possible. So I always suggest,
My clients who are coming to create these folios for their casting requirement that they should always keep the images very natural and realistic, because I feel this is what an agency prefers and they always pay more attention to such images.
I have been Dedicatedly photographing women, women from everyday life, I feel I really enjoy working with everyday people because they are very raw in their approach towards facing the camera, which kind of works in my favour.