Since COVID-19 has kept me from photographing my couples and clients recently, I was inspired by my own wedding photographers, The Hursts & Co., to try a social distancing friendly portrait session via FaceTime. I asked my friend Amy from Amy Debonis Photography to model for me in her dreamy California home. Read below for more about this fun project!
How to shoot portraits via FaceTime:
First things first — here are a few tech guidelines to set yourself up for a successful FaceTime photo shoot:
- Shoot using FaceTime on your MacBook Pro and ask your subject to use his/her iPhone.
- Enable FaceTime Live Photos on both the photographer’s and the subject’s devices.
- Ensure the photos saved to your Photos app. From there, you can save them to a folder and then import them into Lightroom for editing.
Amy and I worked together to position her phone in places around the room where I had my desired angle to shoot from. I had to be super descriptive with my instructions to her on where to place the phone since she couldn’t see what I was seeing, which sounds obvious but is actually a little tricky in practice. As the photographer, it’s important to be extra communicative with your subject during a FaceTime portrait session. As the subject, it’s important to be extra patient with your photographer. 🙂
I added some grain to help with the low-resolution of the images. I also used a de-saturation brush to soften some areas of the images. Even though I didn’t exactly have my camera in my hand, it felt great to be directing a shoot and immersing myself in a photo project again. A silver lining of quarantine has been the innovation that has resulted when you have to get creative in different ways because you’re not working with what you’re used to having access to. I never thought I’d do a portrait session via FaceTime, but overall, I’m really happy with how these images turned out.
I hope this helps you learn how to shoot portraits via FaceTime and inspires you to shoot one yourself!
