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 This is a photo shoot I did last week for Anna. She is a model that will be going to France and Milan next year. She needed some updated photos for her portfolio so she hired me to take some. This shoot does not have anything directly to do with dentistry as I was hired solely as a photographer for this shoot. There are two points I want to make with this thread.

First, It is OK if you are not comfortable taking photos like these even though you may want to. Anna is very sexual and let’s be honest, we all have a little nerd inside of us, myself included, that gets uncomfortable in these situations. It is this nerd that comes out and says you can’t do this, you can’t talk to her, this is unethical for a dentist, etc. If I was not careful this could have crossed the line and I would have been taking photos that made me uncomfortable. The point is, it is OK to feel this way. You just have to learn to NOT let the nerd come out and get your way. The way to do this is be VERY professional about the shoot and anything else you are doing. We already know how to do that. We, or most of us, have fun and joke around in our offices every day. Mike Maroon and Mike DiTolla has made this into an art form. But behind it all we are very professional. Doing photo shoots like these are the same way. Have fun, but be professional. Those of you that have come to the my photography courses have seen how we teach this. A lot of guys can show you how to photograph models and make it so technical it gets confusing. I find the key is to learn how to have fun yet be professional. Then get technical if you want. And if the nerd comes out a little, don’t worry about it. If it makes you feel better, I forgot my name and what town I was in when she laid down on the cement and said this was the pose she used for a jean ad (Last photo)
Second, This can be a practice builder. Not a big one. But every little bit helps. Models and modelling agencies are always looking for photographers. Many of the girls simply cannot afford professional shoots. This is something we can teach you how to do in minutes during your day. What I tell the model is I will GIVE them the shoot but they have to pay for a cleaning and bleaching and let me use the after photos for marketing. I do 20 to 30 portfolio shoots a year and of those only 6 or 7 are “professional shoots”. Not a lot but hey every little bit counts. And not only do you not have to but you SHOULD NOT EDIT THE PHOTOS. Yes, I know that we are taught you have to go into Photoshop and change this and that. But that will ruin her portfolio. Companies want to see what a model looks like without editing. That is the purpose of a portfolio. If all of her photos are edited she will get very little work from the photos. So all you have to do is take the shots and print a few of them out. See, It really is so simple that even a nerd can do it!!

Tony