Photoshoot Collaboration — Tips & tricks!

Interested in expanding your creativity and work behind the scenes? Here some helpful ideas I’ve learned through my experiences.

My experience being part of photoshoots are always fun and exciting! The beauty community has endless opportunities to promote and discover new ideas for your future clients. I’ve learned to step out of my comfort zone to build my confidence. It’s not easy but it’s worth the experience. You never know who is watching and more opportunities will continue to grow! Working in the city of Chicago is a plus. My opinion, more connections in a large diverse community can lead to more opportunities regularly. I met friends over the years who are passionate in the beauty industry. Photographers, makeup artists, wardrobe stylists, event planners etc. It’s all about networking! I love engaging with a community who work tirelessly. The dedication and commitment that other artists share with me is much appreciated! People on set who specialize in their field supports a vision.

The years I spent behind the chair has taught me multiple ways elevate my skills from other artists and my clients. I learn from my mistakes and gain more experience! What helped expand my craft is taking classes or investing new equipment. I also like to keep myself organized and elevate my skills as much as I can. My new addition to learn more ideas is Pinterest! Pinning and creating a vision board is ideal. I’m a visual learner so building a new concept each time or adding more resources to previous pins is super helpful! I also enjoy watching interviews on YouTube from VOUGE. It’s resourceful to understand everyone’s assignments and how to network with one another. I’m a fan of blogging or small magazine articles! I’ve always enjoyed reading pages of a magazine and knowing about someones perspective in the beauty industry. Seeing models pose for stylish clothing, jewelry, or seeing how gorgeous the models hair and makeup look so flawless. I’m motivated by others who share the same skills which is resourceful for me to practice more techniques!

Another helpful way to build your portfolio is to document lots of content! Looking back at pervious content can help you check what can be done differently in the future. It’s better to have a ton of content than no content at all! I also like to study how the models pose in front of the camera. Even though they look perfect behind camera, little imperfections like fly aways or not enough volume in certain areas have been challenging to fix. I’ve had so many pictures of beautiful hair but it didn’t capture what I seen. What helped me remember was viewing the model behind the camera and adjusting hair at the same time. Usually the photographer will assist by asking the model to position themselves a certain way to help exaggerate areas or define texture. You can also learn some helpful techniques, like posture for example is key to mention to models/ clients to position themselves properly. Posture in front of a camera has taught me so much how it can elevate your hair pictures. Another reason why taking on different tasks, like creative collaboration, has opened my eyes to helpful resources I can take with me to the salon and to share with others!