Tips for Shooting Industrial Portraits

In this video, photographers Jay P. Morgan (from the Slanted Lens) takes a look at shooting portraits in a real working factory.

This is the second video Morgan is doing on shooting in an industrial environment. On the previous video he discussed 10 general tips for such a shot – many of them are also very relevant to this video (like make sure you bring clean and labelled shirts for the workers).

A lot of the tips that Morgan has involves pre planing – know in advance what you are going to do, what happens when things don’t work exactly as you plan and make pre-planned alternatives. Also, try and get assistance from the people around you if possible that can help speed things up but be prepared to do everything alone or with your team if the workers are too busy or can’t help.

Start by making sure that all your equipment is working and have extra gear in case something is wrong or you want to add an extra light for example. Find enough power connections for your lights and bring extra long extension cables – you never know how far you will have to go to find a power. Pick your angles and your specific gear – if you use a smoke machine – plug it in early (it can help you hide areas which you might not want to show in the shot. and finally – use colored gels to make even a boring industrial place look interesting.

You can find all of Jay P. Morgan’s videos here on LensVid on the following link. As always you can find more helpful photography tips on our Photography tips section here on LensVid.

Iddo Genuth
Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.

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