Israel Photography Tour Portrait Photoshoot
Israel Photography Tour is delighted to announce our new Portrait Photoshoot Tour to our existing itineraries. For the travel and portrait photographer, this unique tour offers you the chance to spend time photographing some of the exceptionally photogenic faces of Israel, in natural light, and while on-location.
Due to Israel’s complex and ancient history, the country is a melting-pot of people from extremely diverse backgrounds. Christians, Arabs and Jews make up most of the country’s inhabitants. Since the great Diaspora, Jews from all corners of the globe have returned to their ancestral homeland in Israel, and it is fascinating to witness such diversity in such a small country. It is rare to find a country where you could breakfast with Ashkenazi Jews in the high-tech sector, lunch with Bedouin Arabs in the Negev desert, and share coffee with old men from the Druze community – all in one day!
A Druze man photographed on an Israel photography portrait shoot
Israel also has a wide-ranging group of minorities such as the Maronite Christians, Ethiopian Coptic Christians, Armenians, Assyrians, Circassioans, Samaritans and African refugees. To many, this diversity is what makes Israel so special. There is truly nowhere else like it in the world.
This on-location photoshoot tour is completely customised for single-day or multi-day durations. The emphasis on this tour is to show you how to use natural light with the correct backgrounds to make portraits feel as natural as possible. As opposed to using artificial lighting techniques, we believe the manipulation of natural light, the use of reflectors to fill in harsh shadows, and LED lights to add a catchlight to the eyes will give your portraits the full potential they deserve.
Photo shoot of an artist on our Israel Photography Tour
As well as our planned photoshoots, we will also capture candid street portraits while out on our photo walks. Learning how to interact with the locals in a foreign country and understand their customs, traditions and religious concerns is key to becoming a successful travel portrait photographer. We have years of experience in doing this through our international photo workshops and want to convey that knowledge to you! For the artistic photographer, our tour would not be complete without capturing some excellent street photography and environmental portraits around the most interesting locations – perfect for adding context to your portraits.
Portrait of a market trader on a Tel Aviv Photography Tour photo shoot
We will also discuss and experiment with relevant photography equipment. Photographing portraits generally entails using lenses of 50mm or longer focal lengths. This flattens perspectives, lowers distortion, and throws backgrounds out of focus, emphasizing subjects. Portrait photography involves thinking about light sources and contrast, deciding which apertures to use at any given focal length, camera to subject distance to determine, full length, half length or head and shoulders compositions, and so much more.
Portrait of an Ethiopian woman on an Israel portrait photo tour
Portrait photography covers a variety of genres within itself. While candid street photos require fast-paced capture in order to let your subjects continue about their day, a scheduled portrait shoot of a woman may require a slower, more focussed approach. This is where the use of vintage, manual focus lenses on modern digital cameras come into their own. Often, a softer look with more character is required to soften skin, create a halation effect around highlights is preferable to clinical, razor sharp images. We will discuss these technical aspects together with a creative vision of what you are trying to achieve in your portrait photography.
Please contact us with at least 7 days advance notice to book this memorable learning experience. We would be delighted to help you capture the essence of this remarkable country – it’s people.