Complex Staged Portrait Photography

These rules sum up 13+ years of my work: how to become a commercial photographer, start (and finish!) a personal project, find your style, keep growing, not lose heart, and earn a living from what you love.

Staged photography is like Lego: it is built from many bricks. Picture a timed Lego championship: the better you know your pieces and the building plan, the better your chances. Every example comes from my 13 years of commercial work and of dreaming up, producing and shooting personal projects.

What light is, how it works, what it does in the frame and off it, how to handle it and where to get it. The theory comes with practical examples, behind-the-scenes photos and lighting diagrams drawn for the course by a professional illustrator.

Special effects are everything we add on top of the original picture to change the atmosphere, the colours, how visible the light is, or the camera’s view. The video lectures test a range of tools, filters and effect generators.

What to do with a shoot after the shoot: organise the archive, select, develop, retouch and get a photo ready to publish. Less about technique, more about why to use each tool, with plenty of before-and-after examples. Bonus: three screencasts of how I process and edit my work.

How to build a brand and promote yourself; how to reach magazines, agencies and galleries; how to show a portfolio on different platforms; and why to enter competitions and festivals. Plus what a photographer’s career looks like, and the ways to grow a brand.

What makes a picture work and what makes it fail. How to read a photograph and speak the language of images. How to judge your own work, and who to compare yourself with (spoiler: no one). Every rule here comes from my own experience: battle-tested and backed by examples, comparisons and close breakdowns of my own work.