Photoshoot ideas
Teen portraits go wrong when they are staged like a family session. The fix is to photograph the person they are becoming rather than the child their parents remember, and to give them control over how it looks.
In short: Teen portraits go wrong when they are staged like a family session. The fix is to photograph the person they are becoming rather than the child their parents remember, and to give them control over how it looks.
Teenagers who dislike being photographed and parents who want one picture before the next school year swallows it.
Genuinely. A teenager in a place they picked stands differently from one delivered to a park.
Skateboard, guitar, sketchbook, boots, the dog. It gives the hands a job and the picture a subject.
Walking, crossing, turning. Removes self-consciousness faster than any instruction.
For the grandparents, agreed up front as the trade for everything else.
Fifteen minutes with a friend produces expressions no solo session will.
Teenagers are often better photographed serious than grinning, and they usually prefer those frames themselves.
Warm, flattering, forgiving of skin — the thing most teenagers are self-conscious about.
Not as a joke. It is the honest object of the decade and it dates the photograph in a way that will matter later.
Their choice, within reason: a skate park, a high street, a wood, their own room. Familiarity does more for a teenage portrait than scenery.
Check the exact landowner before fixing the call sheet. London parks, streets and private estates do not share one photography rule; the location guides name the responsible authority and the date on which its guidance was checked.
Parents standing behind the photographer. Booking an hour when twenty-five minutes was the real window. And overruling the outfit, which decides the mood of the whole session before the first frame.
Give them control over location and outfit, direct with specific instructions rather than 'smile', keep it under half an hour, and let them see nothing until the end.
Nearby, not behind the camera. Almost every teenager performs differently the moment a parent is in their eyeline.
What they genuinely wear. If the parents need a smarter look, shoot that first and spend the rest of the session on theirs.
Send the date, location and what you need photographed.