photo by Monique Shaw

Today I met international photographer Lara Jade at Shoot Amsterdam. I was waiting for this event, mainly to see her speak live. She’s a good friend of Sue Bryce, my new role model, so seeing her and talking to her in real life made me feel a bit closer to Sue. :) I told her I am starting Glamour Photography in Amsterdam and she said, “oh yeah, I think it’s a great market here”. She encouraged me to do it.

It was refreshing to see how she was interacting with the model, she is using a familiar special posing language, using her hands and key words, language that I learned as well through doing the CREATIVELIVE courses with Sue.

Her keynote/demo was all about ‘mastering one light’. It was sponsored by #broncolor so the stage was decorated with Giant Parabolic reflectors, the one she was using was really huge, a third of the stage. She was controlling the lights via her iPad, with the bronControl app, cool gimmick that raised some eye brows in the audience.

But one thing that stuck to me from everything else that she taught. To her, more important than all the lighting techniques in the world, is the connection with your subject. When you take your time and have have a coffee and a chat with your models before the shoot, connecting on a human level, it makes a huge difference, your portraits will be showing more the emotional side, which is one of Lara’s most compelling quality.

Photo by Monique Shaw

Photo by Monique Shaw