Most people, when they step in front of a camera, do the same thing: they become a slightly more formal version of themselves. They straighten their spine, arrange their face, and wait to be captured.
I understand the impulse. But it is, I have learned, the one thing that prevents the most interesting images.
The Pause Between Poses
The photographs I love most from my sessions are almost never the ones taken in the moment of arrival, when a person is still thinking about how they look. They come later — in the pause between poses, when someone says something that makes the other person laugh unexpectedly, when a child does something surprising, when a person glances away and then back and their face is entirely unguarded.
Those are the images that last.
What I Actually Do During a Session
I talk. I ask questions that have nothing to do with photography. I comment on the light, on the view, on something I noticed about the location. I create small tasks — walk toward me slowly, turn and look back over your shoulder, as if you heard your name — that give the body something to do, so the face is free to simply be.
I watch constantly. My camera is raised long before my client expects it to be, and kept there long after they think I have stopped.
Why It Matters
Photographs made from genuine presence — from a person inhabiting their actual life rather than performing a version of it — carry a different quality of light. Not technical light. Emotional light. You can feel, when you look at them, that something true was happening in that moment.
That is what I am always looking for.
It does not require any special skill from you. It only requires that you trust the process enough to let go of controlling the outcome. That is my job — not yours.