Pictorial Portrait Photography by Lídia Vives (Spanish, Eng sub)

Learn how to capture the essence of Renaissance masters in your photos With a camera and a computer you can not only create scenes, but also new worlds, something in which Lídia Vives specializes. The Spanish photographer gets inspiration from the great Italian masters of the Renaissance to create realistic and surrealist works in equal parts, as she has shown in the different exhibitions she has done in Mexico, Spain and France.

In this course you will learn, by the hand of Lídia, photo retouching techniques and art direction to create your own portraits of Renaissance pictorial style.

About this course You will start by knowing Lídia, who will tell you a little about his work and how he has been developing his style over the years. You will see its influences, mainly in two worlds: painting and portrait photography.

You will discover all the elements you need to know when creating an image: you will learn about the composition and balance to structure and position all the elements well.

Then, you will see everything you need to know to work the center of interest of your photographs to guide the viewer’s eyes wherever you want. You will know the types of formats there are and when you should use them and, in addition, the correct way to reframe, how to work the color taking into account its psychology and characteristics.

You will discover the main characteristics of the Italian Renaissance portrait. Next, you will go to the photo session and see what light you should use and how. In addition, you will prepare the set and also your model.

Lídia will explain to you what is the way to deal with someone when you do a photo shoot and then you can start shooting.

Before finishing the course, you will learn to work well the postproduction of an image, starting in Camera Raw and ending in Adobe Photoshop. You will discover how to give the pictorial effect to your photography through a neat and professional touch-up with the professional advice of Lidia.

What is this course’s project?

You will make a photographic portrait with characteristics of the Renaissance style.

Who is it for? To photographers, artists and anyone interested in the art of portraiture.

What you need You will need an SLR camera with any of these lenses: 18-35 mm, 50 mm or 75 mm, in addition to knowing how to use the manual mode of your camera.

Also have a computer with Adobe Photoshop and digital development software. Lídia will use Camera Raw, although you can also use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

As for the lighting, you can work with natural light or with a softbox and, in addition, you will need a white reflector, which can be made of pen cardboard or expanded polystyrene.