Lots of times photos can be made better just by talking to people. It doesn't seem like much, but simply walking up and saying "Hi, mind if I take some photos of you?" can lead to much better pictures.

Last week I was helping teach a photo clinic at the Lobby Conference. It was being held at the Fairmont Orchid on Hawaii's big island (nice place, by the way). The first evening, while waiting for people to come outside for the
reception, I noticed a man getting ready to do a ceremony on the patio. Being the brilliant person I am, I thought, "Aha! A photo opportunity!" I had two choices - I could stand back and wait for the ceremony and photograph it (which I did later), or, I could walk up, introduce myself, and see about making a better picture. I opted for number two first.

As expected, he was very friendly and happy for me to make some photos. Since I had his permission, I worked the situation. The ceremony involved blowing a conch shell in each of the four directions. There was a great sky behind him, so I asked him to just pose with the conch shell at his mouth while I shot photos. I always tell people at workshops that the hardest part of people photography is walking up and asking permission. Once you've gotten up the nerve to do that, and the person says yes, then work it - shoot until you're sure you've got the photo.

With that in mind, I shot him silhouetted against the sky with the shell, then grabbed my flash, held it out at arm's length (so the light would be coming into his face from the side) and used the Commander mode of my Nikon D700 to trigger the flash (an SB-900). That looked good, but I figured, "hey, he's nice, seems in no hurry, so why not do more?" More in this case meant adding an orange gel to the flash. I always keep orange and green gels velcroed to the sides of my strobes. That way they're handy if I need to use them in incandescent and fluorescent lighting conditions to match the existing light (keep it all the same temperature). A plus to that is if I ever need to add warm light to a daylight situation, I just use that orange gel. So that's what I did, putting it over the face of the flash to give a nice warm cast to his skin.

Last step of the process is to show the subject the shots and offer to email them some. Most people are thrilled when you do that. And I always follow through on that. Not just the email and photo, but an added offer with the email - if they'd be willing to sign a model release, I'd be happy to send them some prints. And model releases are worth money to me - ka-ching! All because I made the effort to go and talk to the person.