Good Portraits Increase Photo Sales

	Portraits contribute to photo sales. Whether their headshots or general portrait posing, portraits are popular.	Shareef is a model and in the entertainment industry. He needed his headshots and portfolio shots to reflect his different characteristics.

When shooting portraits, highlight your model's good characteristics. How do you know what their characteristics are? Ask them! Ask, "what are your best looks?" They will tell you. Start your shots with their "strong" characteristics. This helps them to relax. As their confidence builds, they become more active in front of your camera. Most professional models, even the inexperienced models, know how to "light-up" in front of the camera without much prompting or "confidence boosting."

He has a charming smile. This off-centered shot is meant to look like a snapshot.	Shareef has modeling work from time to time. This shot is from a series published in a clothing catalog.	The shadows add a different effect to this shot.

As a former athlete, Shareef is in pretty good shape and shows well.	Often, black and white is considered prerable to color. I like black and white. But color is my favorite.	Same photo in color. The off-centered posing leaves space in order for this photo to have value in stock photography

Conveying sexiness doesn't always require nakedness. Implied nudity works.	Different variations on the same pose. I changed the lighting on the first two and altered the third digitally.	This shot was sold to a calendar publisher.

Calendar publishing agencies are a good market to investigate for your photo sales. You can increase your chances by reviewing what is published in calendars that your images would fit. As a rule, calendars use themes. Also, multiple images are usually sold (for the different months) although many calendar publishers use multiple photographers. This niche is worth investigating. Historically, your photo sales will benefit.

Creating moods was important for Shareef like most people in the entertainment industry. The photographer has to be creative.	Good shot. But I should have had him tuck the strings in his pants. They are distracting.	My attempt in this shot was to highlight Shareef's naturally brilliant smile in a different angle.

With this shot I wanted to capture a "standard" head and shoulder shot with a slightly different angle.	Although Shareef has a very bright smile, most of the movie and television work he gets has him frowning and looking like a thug.

Good portrait but a so-so headshot. The lighting for a good headshot has to do a better job of controlling shadows.	Good pose but I didn't balance the lighting and had bad shadows.	This shot has been published more than most of other shots combined.