I love the look of candid portraits, but rarely conduct photo shoots that way, and have never assigned them to my classes. This year I did, and before my students shot I did a test to see how it went. We had discussed talking to your subject and/or having your subjects talk to each other to get genuine expressions rather than posed ones. My family and I had just finished dinner, and while we were all still at the table I asked Dustin to start telling funny stories to the boys. As he talked I shot. I started in a really high ISO and then switched to flash. I love how engaged they are as they listen intently. Of course there were LOTS of outtakes, but I did manage to get a good one of each of them. I was really proud of how the students' candids turned out too. It's definitely something we'll do more of in the future.
