A pair of reading glasses resting on a book of Longfellow poemsStudio Photography Mentoring

You probably know I already offer a mentoring option with studio hires.  If you wish to hire the studio for a shoot, I charge the normal studio hire fee plus an additional fee to mentor you during the hire.

What I offer with these sessions is firstly training in how to set up the lights (if you need it) instead of just helping you set up whatever lights you specify we will talk about what you want your lighting to achieve and how best we can configure the lights to make this happen.  If I know in advance the lighting you are going to work with I will try to provide you with lighting diagrams so you can recreate the effect in the future.  I also show you step by step how the lights are set-up.

Next during your shoot I sit in and observe how you shoot, and how you work with the model.  Where necessary I offer advice on how to improve your technique, and make suggestions for props, posing and adding in other ideas that you may not have considered.

At the moment I have a very simple pricing structure for this kind of training.  It is studio hire fee plus 50%.  So a four hour session would be £60 for the studio hire, plus £30 for the mentoring. I am happy to help book models but you are responsible for paying them!

As of the end of June this pricing structure will change, but any mentoring sessions booked before then will be charged at this rate.  So if you are thinking of booking a studio hire with mentoring please book soon to take advantage of these lower rates.

Remote Mentoring

I now have more and more people on my mailing list who are not local to the north west of England and who cannot easily attend training events at the studio.  I am in the process of developing techniques to provide mentoring and training remotely.

This sort of training will be customised to the individual but is likely to include things like portfolio reviews, photography assignments and critique of the images produced.  One-to-one sessions via phone or skype to discuss your photography goals.  If appropriate providing printed notes to assist you.

I am aiming to formally launch this later in the year as a paid service. Prior to that I need to refine my procedures and techniques for offering remote mentoring.  I am looking for two or three people – who are not local to me – who would like to try out this kind of mentoring / training.  If you are interested please email me and let me know what area(s) of your photography you would like help with.

The sorts of areas that would work well for this include:

  • learning a new photography or post-production skill
  • preparing a panel of images for a distinction
  • preparing to shoot your first wedding
  • making the right choices when upgrading your camera kit

For this trial I can’t promise to work with everyone who contacts me but I will try offer as much of the mentoring as possible for free.  I can’t promise to do everything you ask on that basis – however if I do need to charge this will be agreed in advance and there will be no obligation to take up anything that isn’t free.