I have photos from my first portrait sessions I will never show anyone. Not because they’re personal — because they’re terrible. Two flashes lighting the grass instead of the model. A blanket on the ground. Curved perspective, mismatched makeup, an exhausted model who had no idea what I wanted from her — because I had no idea what I wanted from her.
Many would shoot like that for years, not because of lack of effort. But because we often are working hard at the wrong things. Here are the mistakes Jakub Kaźmierczyk shared during our recent webinar on portrait photography.
Mistake 1 — Showing Up Without a Concept
This was the most expensive mistake in terms of wasted sessions and wasted money on gear I didn’t need — because I assumed better equipment would compensate for the absence of an idea.
A shoot without a concept is a shoot where every decision gets improvised on the spot. Two people figuring out what they’re making, mid-session, in a location neither fully understands. The images produced in those sessions reflect exactly that process.
“The concept doesn’t need to be original or elaborate. ‘A quarry outside the city in summer, swimwear, strong light — images that look like they could have been taken in southern Europe.’ That’s a brief. Everyone who works on the shoot understands what you’re making.”
Mistake 2 — Choosing the Wrong Model for the Wrong Reasons
I worked with inexperienced models almost exclusively early on — because they were available, because the arrangement was free, and because I assumed my skills as a photographer mattered more than the person in front of the lens.
All of those assumptions were wrong. An inexperienced model on a TFP shoot doesn’t know how to move, fill space between direction cues, or hold the frame between shots. When two beginners are both learning at the same time, neither makes real progress. My portfolio improved more in three months of working with professionals than it had in the three years before.
Mistake 3 — Overloading on Gear
Two flashes. Three stands. Multiple modifiers. Four hours of setup. The images were worse than what I shoot now with one light. More gear means more variables — more things to configure, more things that can fail, less attention for the things that actually matter.
The best session I ran in recent years used a Canon R5, a 28-70mm, and a single Profoto B1. The outdoor portion used no light at all — just the camera, a black mist filter, and golden hour. The images from that day are still in active use.
Mistake 4 — Starting the Shoot Before Building the Atmosphere
My early sessions followed a pattern: brief greeting, camera out, shooting begins. Sometimes within five minutes of meeting someone I’d never worked with. The model was uncomfortable. I was tense. The images looked exactly like what they were: two people meeting for the first time under professional pressure.
The fix was almost too simple: coffee first. 30 to 40 minutes of real conversation before anything gets photographed. Show the mood board. Ask questions. Let the atmosphere exist before the camera comes out. The sessions that follow those conversations are completely different from the ones that don’t.
Mistake 5 — Avoiding Light That Felt Risky
For the first several years shooting outdoors, I retreated to open shade by default. Safe, flat, predictable — and forgettable. I avoided direct sun, golden hour, and anything that required actually knowing how light works.
The shift happened when I started treating light as something to experiment with rather than manage. Starting two hours before sunset. Trying direct sun with the subject properly angled. Moving five metres in either direction to see what the background does. Most experiments work. The ones that don’t are deleted in ten seconds. The cost of always retreating to shade is every image that could have been made differently.
What Changed When These Stopped Being Mistakes
A clear concept. A professional or experienced model. One light with a clear purpose. A real conversation before the camera comes out. Genuine attention to what the light is doing — not just whether the exposure is correct.
The sessions that followed were shorter, produced more usable images, and cost less in effort than everything from the first five years. Not because the skill level had changed dramatically — because the right variables were finally being controlled.
Words based on a real shoot and workflow from Jakub Kaźmierczyk @jakub.kazmierczyk — commercial photographer and educator based in Wrocław, Poland.
USEFUL LINKS
→ Retouch4me for Beginners — see how to get started
→ Retouch4me Photoshop Panel — free download
→ Arams — free desktop app for batch retouching