Category Archives: Portfolios
Portfolio Shoots
Photography for Modelling & Acting Portfolios
Whether you’re a model trying to stand out from the crowd, or an actor struggling to show your character for casting calls, Southdown Studio can offer you the style of photography you need for your portfolio.
We give each portfolio a completely fresh look, not the same photos time after time like many photographers. We’ll give you lots of help & tuition with poses, good solid advice from our first-hand experience of the industry too, and be honest with you about your chances and suitability.
We can even give you your own page on our model register, and put you forward to our commercial clients for possible paid modelling jobs, plus we work closely with a number of reputable model agencies. If in doubt, read our customer testimonials below!
If you’re unsure whether you’re suited to modelling, why not try an inexpensive modelling test shoot? You do your own makeup, you get loads of photos taken and then you can buy prints or a CD of your favourite photos at extremely reasonable prices.
Get someone special a gift voucher right now! Available for immediate online purchase…
Packages & Offers
- Portfolio photography packages start at only £99 for a one-hour test shoot with 2 large portfolio prints of your best shots.
- A 2-hour shoot with 2 prints costs only £199.
- Our most popular package includes 2 hour shoot, professional makeup and 10 high quality retouched prints or digital photos for just £349 – less than half the price of most studios
- Extra prints, photos on CD etc at very reasonable prices.
- A deluxe full-day’s shoot with professional makeup, multiple locations and all photos on CD is just £750!
Actor’s Headshots
Unbeatable Special Offer! Headshot shoot plus fifty 6×4 headshot/contact cards for just £149!
No-shows and cancellations within 24 hours of a shoot will be charged at the full basic rate
Feedback from Portfolio Clients:
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A true, true professional. Entertaining during the shoot, happy to direct at times, or listen as I detailed what exactly I wanted. You know when you’ve had a sucessful shoot and it was pretty obvious you’ve had a good one when time has flown and you’re still full of energy and ideas. Even then, the [...] |
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Jon made me feel so comfortable we got some AMAZING images despite me being a complete newbie as it was only my second ever shoot. I would recommend Jon to anyone, he is a truly amazing person, and I WILL be working with him very soon whether he likes it or not. http://jennysmithnude.blogspot.com/2011/08/jon-silver.html |
Modelling Skills? What Skills Do Models Need!???
If you’re considering modelling as a career or just a fun hobby, it’s important to know what it all entails. Many people think modelling is just standing in front of a camera looking pretty (or manly) and having your photo taken, but to be a good model there’s so much more to it. Good models are worth more because there are simply so many people (especially girls) wanting to be models; so to be competitive you need to have better skills than anyone else.
So what are these modelling skills? First of all there’s the range of poses you can do. You have to learn poses so that whenever you need another pose, there’s one in your head ready to get into. A lot of photographers will ask you to give them a different pose for each click of the camera. Sometimes they’ll guide you into a pose they want, generally by demonstrating it, so it still helps if you are aware of your physicality (how your body moves). A good range of facial expressions linked to emotion keywords is also useful – for example despairing, sad, happy, elated, joyful, excited, coy or seductive. Posing for photos is a lot like stage acting – you often have to over-emphasise in order to convey all the expression of feeling or emotion you need for the shot, which lasts less than 1/100th of a second. As a rule of thumb, if it hurts or makes you feel like an idiot, it’s probably going to look great on camera.
Lastly you may be asked for moving poses, so that a sense of movement can be recorded in the image. One of these is walking; not the walking you do down the high street, but the sort of walk you’d do in a catwalk show. These moving poses are the most difficult to learn, but are a lot easier if you’ve had some dance training or do sports. Of which more later…
There’s all a point to this, and that is to create an image. What the image is trying to show depends upon the genre of the modelling job. In catwalk modelling, you’re showing the clothes, and it’s the clothes that are important, not the model. Photographically you’re either trying to show off clothes, or a catalogue product, or your hair, or facial beauty makeup, or an emotion or concept.
But modelling isn’t just about what happens in front of the camera or on the catwalk. As a model you’re a self-employed person running a business, and there are a whole load of skills you need to survive and thrive in business. Firstly you need to be able to find yourself work. That means making good contacts, networking, marketing, and above all good written & spoken communications. You need to actively market yourself, which means maintaining a strong, varied and up-to-date portfolio showing the full range of everything you can do. But you have to get your portfolio seen, and that means getting a web site, maintaining profiles on social networking and modelling sites, and making sure the right people get to see them. Sitting back and waiting for people to come to you is never going to ensure success in a crowded market, so you have to be proactive, actively seeking out people you want to work with and building professional relationships with them.
An agency can help by finding jobs for you that you wouldn’t be able to get by yourself. But equally you’ll be able to find work for yourself that the agency wouldn’t even be interested in looking for. It’s important to cast your net as widely as possible, so by all means seek agency representation but don’t expect that it’s the answer to everything. It’s also a matter of getting the right agency. There are of course charlatans, and lots of them. Some are after money, but some are much worse. The legitimate ones aren’t all good either – some of them charge you to join, which means they get their model directory/register paid for by wannabes who’ll end up as “filler”, just making up the numbers. The good ones generally don’t charge anything, but their entry requirements are strict. They tend to be specialists in one field or another; perhaps catwalk fashion models; or teenage models; or plus-size models; or glamour models. Don’t waste everyone’s time by applying to agencies where you’ll be unsuited to their specialism.
As a photographer, when I’m selecting models for a job, I tend to go with models I’ve worked with before because they’re known and reliable, and I already have a good working relationship with them. Next in line are the ones who have been talking to me for a while, perhaps having written me a really well-worded introductory email. Models I don’t know come way down the list, whether or not they’re represented by an agency. So very often it’s not just what you look like, but how you communicate and the professional relationships you maintain. Some models are so good at this, they’re first in line whenever an opportunity comes up, they’ve keep in touch so frequently.
Other modelling skills wouldn’t be classed as skills by most people, but they’re really important nonetheless. For example, looking after yourself – knowing how to eat properly, doing the appropriate exercise to keep yourself healthy… These are essential skills for the successful model. You only have one body, and your body and mind are the tools of your trade, so don’t mistreat them. Whatever your dress size, you need to be toned and physically fit.
Reliability deserves a mention all its own. It’s important to turn up for a shoot or show on time, properly prepared for work, and carrying everything you’ll need. Part of reliability is honesty. People tend to talk to each other, and the truth tends to surface all to easily. We all understand if you can’t make it because of something bad that’s happened, but one girl seemed to have had five grandfathers, all of whom either died or were rushed to hospital on the day of one shoot or another. Another girl destroyed her entire reputation for reliability by cancelling two shoots at the last minute with different photographers on consecutive days giving inconsistent excuses to do with college exams and then even having the audacity to turn up on MSN Messenger at the times she was supposedly unavailable.
This brings me to what I consider the most important and valuable modelling skill of all: intelligence. There’s nothing more attractive in a person than a burning intelligence, even better if combined with creativity, and if great good looks are part of the package too then that’s fantastic.
So, if you thought modelling was just standing in front of a camera looking pretty, think again.
Read about Jon Silver’s Southdown Studio modelling portfolio photography services for Brighton & Sussex.
Or visit Southdown Studio’s model register for models in Brighton & Sussex.
“Could I be a model?” – a Photographer’s Perspective
Model Family: All these people are models. Only two of them are actually related to each other.
The question I get asked most often as a studio photographer is “could I make it as a model?”
The person asking the question has generally given very little information about herself (yes it could be himself, but in reality it’s mostly girls). She’s just presented one or two photos, usually everyday snaps photographed with little or no skill on the part of the photographer… or webcam photos showing just head and shoulders. It doesn’t matter anyway, it’s not about everyday looks.
One of my favourite models, one who’s provided the human form for some of my best art shots, is of course gorgeous. Utterly beautiful. So pretty. So everyone says, from seeing her in my photos. And they’re right of course, but would they think so if they met her in the flesh, in every day life? I think her looks are interesting and outstanding, whilst underneath is a complex character lurking with an unusual set of personality traits, and for me that makes her worth photographing. But whether it makes for someone about whom the average British man in the street (or in the pub) would say “phwoaarrrrr”… well, perhaps not. Does it matter what they think anyway? Perhaps not again. It all depends who’s looking at the images.
But all this begs a question. Faced with a bare, plain background and a human subject, what exactly are we photographing? Is it what’s on the outside? Though we think what we’re looking at is alive, in fact everything on the outside, everything that we can see – skin, nails, hair and so on – is dead. And yet it’s definitely not a dead thing there in front of the camera. Apologies to anyone who thinks that anything written about death and dead people is morbid – just humour me for a moment. I’ve seen a dead person – my late mum, in fact – and it certainly wasn’t her. Everything she was, everything that made her herself, had gone. There was nothing left of her humanity, her personality, her mind… her soul, if you will. Tut tut, and me an atheist too.
An alive person is so much different, so… animated. But it’s more than just muscle tone and movement. It’s something inside that manifests itself through to the outside. So perhaps that part of a human subject that we’re actually photographing is the soul. Let’s just call it that anyway… it has a lovely, resounding mystique about it all. Faced with a model, I photograph her soul. Does it then matter what she looks like? Strangely, the answer may in fact be “no”.
Certainly I’ve met strikingly good looking people who photograph terribly badly, and vice versa. Are they “unphotogenic”? I really don’t subscribe to that notion at all, the idea that you’re either photogenic or unphotogenic. I think, as a concept, it’s twaddle. It’s much more to do with how you feel at the time you’re being photographed. Given that most women seem to be constantly dissatisfied with how they look, perhaps that explains quite a lot about the moment when those women are photographed that I really don’t have to go into.
On occasion I’ve started a shoot with my subject telling me she’ll probably look awful, almost certain that a good photograph of her can never be even a remote possibility. Then after a few shots I’ll show her a good one, and she’ll quite like it; she’ll start to believe. Repeating this cycle, the good ones get more frequent. Eventually she’s entirely comfortable and looking great. Am I therefore photographing what’s on the outside, or merely an external reflection of what’s going on on the inside? Certainly I’ve had my “eureka” moments… like when one lady with a tough external mask stared at her photographs in tears of disbelief asking me how I’d stripped away all the years of life’s hurt and damage and seen into her soul. Er… wow.
Anyhow, I digress, as no doubt anyone who’s read my ramblings with any regularity will realise that I do without very much prompting at all. Back to models and the question of “could I make it as a model”?
Ok, so there are of course various sorts of modelling. One size most certainly doesn’t fit all, and there are niches out there for women of all ages, sizes and body shapes… not to mention moral limits. Whether or not you’ll succeed in any of them depends largely upon criteria that have nothing to do with the way you look. Like everything in this world, the answer lies in your presentation. For a model, presentation isn’t just how you look in person and in your portfolio. It’s your entire demeanour. It’s an attitude. It’s how you come across in your written and spoken communications. It’s turning up on time and in a state of appropriate preparedness. It’s feeling that you’re in control of your own destiny.
Of course there’s a grand misconception, especially amongst young girls with model dreams, that modelling is a never-ending round of parties and photoshoots, a glamourous world of luxury and excess and adulation. Of course they have no idea of how they’re going to get there, but they think it’s a case of being noticed somehow by an agency or a scout or a photographer and then whisked away to a better life. The reality is very different. Good, successful models have to work damned hard, and the ones on their way there have to work even harder. Apart from anything else, modelling is an acting job, but unlike conventional acting which affords you time to act in a sequence of dialogue placed into its proper geographical, temporal and social context, in photography you only have 1/125th of a second or so to convey all the emotion, feeling and context of a scene. At its best we never tell a complete story but rather hint at ideas that the viewer’s mind writes into its own very personal story. Rather like stage acting, it has to be somewhat overdone, hammed up, and overdoing a pose and holding it for a long moment tends to cause aches and pains the following day for all but the fittest models.
That assumes you’ve even been offered the shoot in the first place. It’s a crowded market. How do you get noticed amongst the 100s of other girls who sent their details in? Blimey, is it even worth bothering? Thousands of others didn’t. They don’t stand a chance. The 100s each stand some chance. In other words, what you do behind the scenes matters too, even more in fact. As a model, just as with any performer, you are your own self-employed business-person, marketing yourself as a product. If you get it right, you’ll find work. If you don’t, it’s back to the day-job.
To start off with, you’ll need a portfolio. There’s no use in writing to people who might be able to offer you something if they can’t see you in action. But there’s no use having a portfolio consisting of dozens of mediocre photos either. Choose five outstanding images. Don’t get emotionally attached to certain images that may be substandard. Learn to be your own harshest critic. When you present it to someone, do so with pride, not an apology. Your approach should also indicate that you know something about who you’re writing to. If it’s a magazine, say something specific about the magazine; if it’s a photographer, mention a specific shot you like and throw a compliment. And expect no reply or at best a “no”. You won’t be chosen more often than those times when you are selected. But grow a thick skin, and move on. And remember, every five minutes spent wishing and what-iffing is a wasted five minutes. Don’t just sit there, do something!
Of course it’s also important that you look after your product. Drinking, smoking and not exercising is just plain stupid, when it’s affecting the only marketable commodity you have. If you’re going to have thighs and a bum, at least make sure they’re toned. It’s not hard. Eat a healthy diet. Try walking a bit. Or cycling. Or swimming. And lay off the fags, drugs, etc etc.
Try to tell the vast majority of girls all this and you’ll fail to get through at all. They’ll continue to mess people around, fail to turn up to shoots, and use the death of their fifth or sixth grandfather as an excuse. Clear away the time-wasters and there are very few who’ll ever make it. Are they the best lookers? Who’s to say? But they’re definitely the ones who deserve it. And ask any of them if it’s the glamourous idyll the wannabes think it is, and don’t be surprised at the answer.
