HOW TO: Create a Photoshoot

A successful photoshoot requires a lot of coordination, communication, and a clear vision with your team and subjects. Running your own photoshoot can be intimidating, even for an experienced photographer. While having some technical knowledge or experience in assisting photoshoots is always a plus, it’s never impossible, even for a novice, so long as you plan properly!

Our amazing Creative & Experiential Coordinator, Isabel Ng, shares her process as the lead photographer of our Women History Month campaign. Our photoshoot featured 10 models and took around three weeks to brainstorm, coordinate, shoot, and edit.

Step 1: Prep and Research

Before any actions are taken, it’s best to have a vision in mind.

Research
Talk to your client. Find out what the subject matter is and what kind of message they are aiming to portray through these images. What’s on the initial shot list? What are your must-haves vs nice-to-haves? You can always build on this once you get a better sense of the vision.

Things to ask: Budget? On-location or in-studio? What kind of environment will you be shooting in? What equipment is available, if not your own? Shot list?

Moodboards
Moodboards create visual references of poses and expressions for your models, narrow down props, locations, and set designs–building the aesthetic and tonal framework for you to share with your crew and subjects.

Step 2: Set Up

It’s time to start gathering your tools and set up your space! While we used very minimal props for this shoot, it is always good to have a set designer if you want to create an environment that compliments your vision.

Equipment
You don’t always need a fancy camera – you can shoot with anything, even your phone! While gear quality is important, lighting, composition, and subject theme are the core elements to focus on.

What we used:

  • • Canon DLSR EOS 7D
  • • Softbox Lighting
  • • LED portable light
  • • Black Backdrop w/ Backdrop Stand
  • • Adjustable Studio Lamp
  • • Bounce Card
  • • Table and Stool
  • • Extension cords
  • • Gaffer tape, clips, clamps (etc.)

Nice-to-haves:

  • • Makeup & Hair Stylist
  • • Costume/Fashion Stylist
  • • Set Designer/Prop Stylist
  • • Production Assistant
  • • Light meter
  • • Sandbags

Isabel’s Tip: It’s important to note you should try to select gear according to what you’re shooting and what your ideal look/aesthetic (ie. 35mm/50mm lenses are standard for portraits but you can also shoot with ultra-wide angles for big sweeping shots). You can go minimal or maximal, but either way, adding artistic flair and making do with what you have can be a really fun and fulfilling challenge.

Step 3: Lighting

Perhaps the most important step before shooting is lighting. Lighting can create the tone of your project and usually needs to be adjusted based on the set, pose, and angles. We used 2–3 sources of light and a bounce card (white paper/board). While all the final shots looked very similar and consistent, we needed to readjust the lighting’s contrast and placement for almost every shot.

  • • Softbox lighting is ideal for portraits. Have at least 2–3 for even lighting but you can get away with just one if you don’t mind a more dramatic look.
  • • Natural lighting is a great option, but since you’re chasing the light, it’s best to plan your schedule around the way a room is lit by the sun throughout the day. South-east facing windows will usually get the most direct daylight from sunrise to sunset.
  • • Try a diffuser in case your lighting is too harsh/strong.
  • • Use a bounce card or reflector to help bounce lighting into shadows to open them up.
  • • Sandbags or weights to keep light stands steady and avoid accidents.

Step 4: Camera Settings

You’re almost ready, everything is set, your lights are adjusted, but what about your camera? Setting up your camera depends on your set, lighting, and theme, and may change with each pose or model.

Photo Cred/ @legacy_creative_photograpjy

  • • Light Meter (for the shadows so you don’t end up with extremely dark areas, but balance is key so you don’t blow out your highlights either) depending on the lighting. To do this, you would go into your camera settings to set your shutter speed, aperture, and ISO.
    • • Try not to bump up the ISO too much if it’s not necessary. The higher the ISO, the noisier or “grainy” the image will be.
  • • Shooting in RAW will allow you more leeway when editing in post. Remember: Bigger file → more pixels → easier to fix while editing!

Isabel’s Tip: Low light settings can be restricting depending on your camera & lens specs. Despite how high you may bump your ISO or adjust your aperture, sometimes you’re still forced to set your shutter speed to be a lot slower than you’d like. Tripods are a good tool to keep your camera steady if your body isn’t.

Step 5: Shooting

With everything finally ready, it’s time for the shoot. Here, communication is key. Working with models who are used to being in front of the camera and knowing their angles is always ideal but not required (or always possible). Have a conversation with your subject, and try to get to know them as a person so they’re comfortable. Ask them to sit on a stool or box, lean against a table, or suggest putting their weight on one leg if they’re initially too stiff. Always compliment and crack jokes to loosen them up. Play music throughout the shoot. If they favor certain sides or angles, capture those but don’t be afraid to ask them to change their position and give direction. Make sure to keep track of time and take breaks when needed as photoshoots can be tiring!

Isabel’s Tip: Always have SD cards with plenty of storage. However, if you’re really running low on space, JPEGs will not hurt you for digital use (it will if you’re trying to print to billboard size though…).

Step 6: Editing

Perhaps the most time-consuming part of a photoshoot is editing. Pick out your favorite shots from the shoot beforehand and use your software of choice. For Isabel, she used Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop.

  • • Lightroom is best for basic and batch post-processing, including color, contrast, exposure, and cropping.
  • • Photoshop is best for detailed post-processing, including blemish removal, fine-tuned adjustments, and complex artistic edits.

Isabel’s Tip: I primarily will use Lightroom to pick my selects and color correct them in bulk. This is usually enough for event coverage and when I don’t need to make major modifications to an image. If I need more detailed retouching, especially for portraits and products. I’ll then export and upload them into Photoshop for fine-tuning or more artistic editing.

 

Conclusion

The International Center of Photography has amazing photography courses and workshops online or in-person in New York City. Isabel highly recommends visiting the museum and enrolling in their programs to learn more about the history, techniques, portfolio building, and conceptual thinking behind photography.

Anyone can learn photography basics and technical skills, but training your eye to create a strong and unique image is what really makes a photographer stand out. Get inspired with reputable photographers’ work, collaborate and learn with friends, and consume other art styles and cultures to broaden your mind with different ideas, concepts, and inspiration.

Check out Isabel Ng’s work here: http://www.isabelng.com/

Sasha Braverman
Social Media Coordinator&
ADMERASIA
sashab@admerasia.com
Racism Is Contagious by ADMERASIA – a platform that provides consolidated, impactful tools to combat the spread of hate crimes against the Asian American community. Visit https://racismiscontagious.com/ to learn more.
ADMERASIA’s winning spot, INVISIBLE, shows why it is time to tell better stories about Asian Americans. Take the pledge. Visit www.threeinfive.com to know more.

 

I am a Recovering Self-Hating Asian:
How American Media Warped my Opinions on my Community

– Me begging my parents to let me play my “Blues Clues” game, resonating with media very early on in my life.

 

During Labor Day weekend, I saw “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” in theaters. Like many Asian Americans, remembering how big of an impact “Black Panther” had on the Black community, I was nervous about having high expectations as I entered the theater. I walked out with my expectations blown away. It was so jarring to see “Shang-Chi” represent such nuanced cultural aspects of Asian American life on the big screen, without being overly stereotypical or alienating to the non-Asian audience. In that moment, I felt so proud of being Asian American. Unfortunately, pride for my race was only something I’d began to feel in recent times, because the media I consumed growing up was a very different experience.

In the early 2000s when I was just a kid, mainstream media was still predominantly white-centric. The stereotypes of Asians being the nerds who can’t get a date were still widely strengthened by movies and TV shows. The main cast of high school teenagers would seldom have an Asian representative, and, at most, have a side character with a couple of one-liners that only perpetuated the stereotypes. Thinking back now, whether or not my peers had been influenced by the media, it had defined the perceptions I had of myself and my fellow Asians at large, without me even realizing it. I had always been easily influenced by media growing up; from growing my hair out like Anakin Skywalker to being obsessed with suits because of Barney Stinson. And with over a decade’s worth of media taken in, it’s not a surprise that what I considered life “should be like” became the white-dominant culture that was portrayed on the big screens.
 

– The influences of media on me were very clear growing up, as I would want to dress up as whatever I saw on the big screen.

 
Before I dive deeper, I want to preface by saying that my childhood was a good one. Many Asians have had to live through levels of racism that I’ve never even come close to experiencing. I wasn’t ever bullied outside of some mutual teasing amongst friends and I got along with most of my classmates. At worst, people would say my full name “Shane Shen Kuo” with a racist accent as a greeting. I would also receive perfect scores on the weekly math quiz, only to hear classmates dismiss my accomplishments by saying “Oh, Asian”. This reaction was common, despite my parents being artists that failed their math classes in college and are the furthest thing from tiger parents. These types of microaggressions were the extent of the racism I had to deal with. But microaggressions cut after a while.

I remember standing at a bus stop with classmates when one pointed out, “Your nose isn’t great, it’s too flat.” This led me to spend countless nights massaging, pinching, and pulling my nose in an attempt to sharpen, or “fix”, it. I remember a student trip to Barcelona where I and my non-Asian classmates sat around a lunch table eagerly sharing our knowledge on adult film actresses, but when my turn came to name one, I was skipped over. No one seemed to care or notice, so I decided to ignore it and continued to laugh along, but I’ll never forget the feeling. The feeling of realizing that, when it came to anything romantic or sexual, Asians didn’t belong.

Even if microaggressions hurt sometimes, to my teenage eyes, it was just “how things were” and it only made me assimilate more. Eventually, trying to not be the typical Asian stereotypes became a major driver for my personality: 

“Asians are shy and not social” — I became a social butterfly.

“Asians are the ‘model minority’” — I became the rebel.

“Asians are pushovers” — I became the pusher.

 

In a lot of ways, I succeeded in doing what many Asian Americans are taught to do, which is assimilate into the dominant culture. But during my quarantine over the pandemic, I’ve had ample time to reflect on my childhood, and I’ve come to realize that it was BECAUSE I assimilated so well that I had become what many in the Asian community refer to as a “self-hating Asian”.

Since the 10th grade, I’ve repeated the same excuse when matchmaking friends attempted to pair me with Asian counterparts. “I am not attracted to Asian girls.” This line was something I would always say when the topic of relationships came up. The worst part was that I would say it with a sense of pride, as if me being an Asian and feeling this way would prove how worthy I am of fitting into white culture. Just thinking about it now makes me repulsed at myself. But at the time, I truly didn’t find Asians to be attractive. In my mind, it was like being Asian instantly put you below every other race when it came to looks. When people asked why, I would give reasonings like “they aren’t social enough for me to connect with them” or “they’re never inviting towards me”. All of which were just excuses because I hadn’t realized the truth about how I felt about my race. It wasn’t till the end of high school when I was dating an Asian girl, that I learned it wasn’t right of me to put all Asian girls into a box (and yes, aware of the meta-irony of this in retrospect). Even then, however, I didn’t consider why I felt the way I did originally.

Of course, I didn’t just feel this way about Asian women; I felt the same about Asian men, especially myself. I remember staring in the mirror every morning, thinking about how unattractive I was solely because I was Asian, internalizing that “this is the way it was” and that there was very little I could do about it.

The scariest part of being conditioned to think less of yourself just because of your race is that you’ll also feel the same towards others of your race as well.


 

I never wanted to admit it at the time, but because I felt I was unattractive simply for being Asian, I never felt any of my Asian guy friends were attractive either. I remember 6 of my Asian friends heading to a Bar Mitzvah, all in suits, walking down the street feeling like we were dashing young men taking over the town. For a moment, I had forgotten about how big the pond was, and when the pond was just us, I felt at ease with myself. But the second we walked into the party, I saw dozens of our non-Asian classmates all dressed up, dancing and chitchatting, and that feeling immediately went away. After that day, I continued to feel like we were all doomed to live an uphill battle when it came to finding love in America.

It wasn’t just the people that I had mentally pushed away; it was also the culture. I visited Taiwan every year with my family. While I was there, we would do all kinds of cultural activities with our extended family that lived there; gambling with dice on Lunar New Year in our chi pao, visiting temples to pray, and eating shark fin soup and stinky tofu. My mom used to drop me off at a bookstore in Taipei, and I would spend hours looking at all the manga there. I remember feeling so safe at the moment, not a single worry about what other Americans might think. But when I got back home to New York, I felt the need to hide those experiences from my friends. I would convince myself that I was above doing these “Asian” activities. I would tell stories to my cousins about all the crazy things we got up to in America. Parties that last to 3 am, late-night loitering on the streets; anything to show how cool us “Americans” were.

It’s clear to me now that it was less so to show how American I was, but more so to show how I was not like them; how I was not Asian.


 

– Lunar New Year dinner – Taiwan 1999

 

Thinking back on it all now, I am truly filled with guilt and regret. I feel guilty for dismissing and undermining my people for so long; for thinking so lowly of them, as if me trying to run away from my roots made me superior. To automatically dismiss getting to know a girl romantically just because of her race. To hang with my closest Asian friends day after day, talking them up when deep inside I felt we were all the bottom of the barrel. I was no better than the racists screaming at us to “go back to our country”.

I regret not seeing how amazing all my cultural experiences were. Most of all, I regret not being able to feel proud of those experiences; to let them define me and have them be more than memories I hid in a box. Fortunately, after graduating college and separating myself from the student body, I’ve gotten the chance to feel more comfortable in my skin and find tons of ways to connect with my culture. I’ve incorporated many cultural aspects of day-to-day living that my parents do, such as making tea every day in a more traditional Asian manner or listening to music with Mandarin vocals. I am no longer afraid to wear Asian-inspired apparel. Over quarantine, I was moved to run a fundraiser for AAPI communities that were suffering during COVID by selling merchandise online to a niche video game community I’m a part of, which managed to raise over $6500 in two months. It took months of planning, ideating merchandise designs, and networking within the community before launch, and I had to do it all on my own within the confines of my apartment due to COVID. It took a lot out of me, but the amount of positive feedback and kind messages I got from fellow Asian Americans made me feel more included in our community more than ever before. The teenager I was would’ve never even considered putting any effort into supporting the AAPI community, let alone solo-run the campaign. Despite incredibly horrible circumstances, the state of the world gave me the chance to prove to myself that I have fundamentally changed from the self-hating Asian I had been to someone confident enough to love his roots despite what society has tried to make him believe.

– Kind words about the fundraiser from various people, many of which were Asian American.

 
So after “Shang-Chi”, I walked home thinking about how different my life would be if this movie came out when I was a kid. I would have felt the same pride in my culture I feel now, be able to walk into a classroom with my non-Asian peers having a better understanding of my culture after also seeing the blockbuster hit. Who knows, maybe my flat-nose-hating Caucasian friend would have dressed up as Shang-Chi for Halloween. Maybe his little brother will do it this year.

Movies like this make sure younger generations can feel comfortable in their own skin; by sharing and listening to authentic stories we can feel more represented and heard.


 

With society interacting online non-stop, the forms of media have evolved and become more accessible than ever before; so we need to make sure the content doesn’t repeat the same mistakes of the past. That’s why I felt the need to write about my story — so people can see the inner cultural identity struggle of an Asian man, something not nearly represented enough in media even today. I know mental health can be very taboo to discuss so openly in our community, but it’s the lack of discussion that keeps the flames of identity crises in our community alive. Our people came to this country for new opportunities, but what’s the point if we lose who we are in the process?

 

– Me visiting family, Taiwan 2019

 

Shane Kuo
UI/UX Designer&
Illustrator&
ADMERASIA
Shanek@admerasia.com
Racism Is Contagious by ADMERASIA – a platform that provides consolidated, impactful tools to combat the spread of hate crimes against the Asian American community. Visit https://racismiscontagious.com/ to learn more.[R]EVOLUTION by ADMERASIA – a platform that connects brands with Asian American innovators and gamechangers rewriting the rules for social advocacy, content creation and entertainment. Visit www.admerasia.com/revolution to know more.