Inside a Portrait Session: How We Prepare, Light and Listen

It starts with a conversation, not a camera

Before anyone picks up a camera, I usually spend twenty minutes on the phone with the person or family we will be photographing. I am the Interviews Editor here, so listening is the part of the job I know best, and I have found it carries over directly to portraits. I ask what the photographs are for, who will see them, and what the room or workplace means to them.

Those answers decide almost everything that follows. A retired fisherman who wants one honest picture for his grandchildren needs a different afternoon than a family group marking a move. I also ask what they dislike about being photographed. People are usually specific, and that specificity saves us both time on the day.

Margaret Doyle, our founder and lead photographer, makes the final call on location and timing, but she relies on these notes to arrive prepared and unhurried.

Choosing the room and reading the light

Natural light is the heart of our portrait sessions, so we plan around a window rather than around a schedule. When Margaret visits a home or workplace beforehand, or looks at phone photos sent in advance, she is checking which way the main windows face and when the sun comes in. A north-facing kitchen in mid autumn can give a soft, even glow for most of the day.

She also notes what the light does to the walls and floor. Cream paint bounces warmth back onto faces, while a dark panelled room swallows it. Sometimes the best option is a studio corner with a single large window and a pale reflector, which keeps things simple and avoids a crowded home.

In these shorter, greyer weeks the usable window of good light is narrower, so we tend to book sessions in the late morning or early afternoon.

• Look for the largest window in the space
• Note the time the sun reaches it
• Clear a small area behind the subject

What happens in the first ten minutes

The opening of a session is mostly unphotographed. Margaret sets up quietly, a camera on a tripod, one reflector, and nothing that hums or flashes, while I sit and talk with the sitter about ordinary things. Often this is when the real expression appears, because the person has stopped performing for a lens.

People often apologize for how they look in the first few frames. We tell them early that nobody is being graded, and that we will take far more pictures than we will ever show. The first twenty or thirty exposures are rarely the keepers; they are the warm-up for everyone, photographer included.

With families, we let children wander and play. Some of the best frames come from a parent glancing down at a child mid-sentence, long after the formal grouping has been done.

Directing without stiffening

Posing is where portraits tend to go wrong, so we give very little instruction. Instead of saying where to put hands, Margaret asks people to do something small: hold a mug, rest against a workbench, mend a seam, look out of the window and tell her what they can see. A maker holding the tool they use every day almost always looks more at ease than one told to fold their arms.

When someone is unsure, a question works better than a direction. I sometimes ask about the first time they used that workshop, or what their mother would have said about the dress. The face softens, and Margaret is ready for it.

We also stop earlier than people expect. Most sessions run about an hour and a half, and tired sitters rarely give us anything new after that.

• Give people something to do with their hands
• Ask questions rather than issue commands
• Stop while the sitter still has energy

After the session: choosing and caring for the images

Back at the office, Claire Beaulieu, our photo editor, goes through every frame with Margaret. They mark a small selection, usually a dozen or so, that feels true to the sitter instead of merely flattering. Colour and tone are adjusted lightly; we do not smooth away lines or reshape faces, because the people in our pictures live in them every day.

The sitter receives the selected images by arrangement, along with a short note on how they may be used. If a family wants to share them with relatives or print them for a wall, that is straightforward. Wider publication or licensing is discussed separately and only with clear agreement.

If someone is unhappy with a particular frame, we listen and set it aside. A portrait should be something a person is glad to keep.

What I take from these sessions

Watching a session from a chair in the corner has taught me that a good portrait and a good interview have the same ingredients: patience, a little curiosity and no rush. The camera simply records what trust has already made possible.

If you are thinking about a session, the most useful preparation is not choosing an outfit. It is deciding what you want the picture to say to the person who will one day look at it, and telling us. We will build the afternoon around that.