I never call myself a photographer - I'm just someone who likes taking pictures and is ridiculously pleased to have a big camera - but last weekend I went to a mini workshop on creative portraiture. It was only two hours but I had fun learning more about taking pictures of people. The two most important points were light and focus.

We learned how to take advantage of whatever light was around and had the opportunity to use a big studio light (Dave - who led the workshop - called it his fake sun). I like natural light the best but it felt pretty cool to use the studio light. The sun was setting by the time we were playing around with our cameras so we had fluorescent lights on as well. Sometimes their orangeness was an interesting effect but I discovered I could avoid it, and still have a nicely lit photo, if I switch my camera to shoot in black and white.

Focus was a simple lesson: get the eyes. A person's eyes are where you connect and if they are in focus the story will be better. Because creative portraiture is all about telling a story. The story can be real or just for fun but it is what makes the portrait so good and when I think of portraits I love they are always the ones where something is going on.

The workshop was led by Dave Brosha and our two lovely models were Erin (with the dark hair) and Nicole (with the blond highlights).