Remote Photo Shoots
The beauty of a remote shoot is that clients can go about their day in and out of the shoot day, they can attend meetings while I’m shooting, they can pop in and see SOOC (straight out of camera) images and we can tweak, just like we would IRL.
How We Produce a Successful Remote Photo Shoot
Pre-Production: All pre-production becomes more important than ever. Creative direction meetings, mood boards, open discussions, planning, itinerary planning - all of these meetings can be done over the phone or if you need to screenshare or show props, video conferencing works great. Any way you slice it, this piece of any shoot, remote or not, is critical, but with remote shoots, it’s even more imperative that everyone is confident in the plan.
Setting the Stage: I give my clients a clear “how this will work” set of instructions, both on the phone and in writing. This way they know what to expect from me and know I am accessible during the shoot as I would be if they were in studio.
How This Will Work:
Outline the day with a call sheet, as a normal shoot would have
Create a video conference and share the link with the client. I make mine for 30 minutes before start time and 2 hours after wrap time, just in case. I wouldn’t want my video conference to time itself out.
Shoot tethered with Adobe Lightroom. All photographs I shoot will go from my camera to my computer.
Screenshare so the client can see each shot as it is coming into my computer
Audio is on so we can communicate throughout the shoot.
When I’m all setup and get a few shots that are worth sharing, I will either text or email the client to let them know they can open Zoom or just start talking.
Once we have a few shots to get going, we basically just talk, shift camera angle, change the lights, etc until we get there. I overshare - I tell the client exactly what I’m going to do so they know that I’m moving things around the set or have walked away for a moment to grab gear. Since they can’t see me, I don’t want them to feel like they’re flying blind, so I just tell them what’s happening on my side.
If I need to regroup or totally change the lighting setup for example, again, I over-communicate and let the client know they can pop off Zoom and I will text them when I’m ready and we can get back to it.
Each image that comes into Lightroom can be seen as it’s shot, just like they would see it when we do an IRL shoot. The client can take screenshots to share the image with other team members, I can zoom in to a specific piece of the image and show them something, whatever it is, it can be done just like if we were together looking at my computer.
One addition this year is we’ll be adding an auto-populated gallery that the client can access immediately and choose proofs.
Wrap: Just like a normal photo shoot, we will go through the images, make sure we have everything per the shot list, and then we wrap.
I love IRL shoots. I love the collaboration on set with the client. I love nerding out and getting the shot. I love the creativity that flies around in the air. That said, remote shoots have been a saving grace and can still yield amazing photography with that creativity still flies around. I can see this working for teams who can’t or aren’t ready to travel to the studio and gives us the opportunity to work with clients who aren’t in our backyard.
We’re two+ years into the pandemic - crazy to think, right? With COVID-19 protocols in place, it can make photo shoots a bit more difficult. We’ve pared down the number of people on set, we’ve been sweating in our masks, we’ve been hand sanitizing throughout shoots, we’ve been trying to stay away from each other on set…we’ve had to be flexible and accommodating to make it all work. Remote photo shoots take all of that added stress and logistics off of the table and let us produce amazing imagery together.
