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If you’re just getting started with taking portraits, or would like to start taking portraits but don’t know where to start, this is the place to be. Even if you’ve been taking portraits already, you may just find something useful in this series.

In this series, I’m going to take you from an absolute beginners starting point, and take you through to a point where you’re taking consistently beautiful portraits. I hope to take the guesswork out of your learning process. When I was learning to take portraits, I had to scrape together bits and pieces of information on equipment and technique from all sorts of sources. There were many large open holes of information where I just couldn’t find the answers to my burning questions. I never did find them until I figured them out on my own. These gaps will hopefully be filled with this series.

We’ll start this series with a little bit of philosophy and concept which will make your picture taking so much easier. This way you’ll know why it is we’re doing what we’re doing during the course. Then we’ll talk about equipment and what you’ll need to get started. Next, we’ll cover the various basic lighting setups that are most common in portraiture. After that, we’ll break some of those rules and get a little funky, just to see what we get. Finally, I’ll send you off with a little advice on how you can apply the lessons you’ve learned in this series to all sorts of photography.

My intention is to have an installment of this series each week, as that’s about how long it will likely take me to whip up each post. In between posts in this series, I’ll continue to make regular photography related posts about other topics of interest. So check back regularly!

To make the most of this series, I hope you’ll get involved and start posting any questions and comments on the discussion thread I’ve started specifically for this series on the Sublime Light discussion forum. You can go directly to the thread here. Also, I want to see your work! As you go through the series and practice what you’re learning, I beg you to post your photos to the Sublime Light photo pool. Show your stuff off to me and the rest of the world. Don’t be shy!

After this series, I plan to do an intermediate series which will focus on taking portraits outdoors. Once you’ve mastered the concepts in this course, that one will be a breeze. Of course, this one will be a breeze too.

So get ready, because your photography is about to be taken to a new level. First up: the fundamentals of light and how it works. Don’t worry though, I won’t get all mathy on you, it’ll be easier than you think.