Roberto explains how he improved his posing and lighting skills through focused repetition and why photographers should practice outside of paid client sessions. He also shares how stronger technical skills can create more confidence and more creative freedom behind the camera.

Episode Highlights 🎤💡:

(05:19) - Turn Weakness Into Skill Through Practice

(19:27) - Use Lighting to Communicate

(30:40) - Practice for 20–30 Minutes a Week

Connect with Pat Miller ⬇

LinkedIn | Website

Connect with Roberto Valenzuela ⬇

Facebook | Instagram

I'm Pat Miller, and this is the Professional Photographer Podcast. I hope you're ready for a masterclass because that's what we're going to have on today's show. What does it take to get to the limit of your potential, to go above and beyond with your artistry that you don't even know is possible? Today's guest, Roberto Valenzuela, is going to explain what it takes, and it isn't some magic formula. It's not some impossible task. It's practicing for 30 minutes a week. Do you think we can do that? Practice for 30 minutes a week? Of course you can. And can you put in the time and the effort to learn all there is to know about the basics like posing, lighting, and psychology? Of course you can. So the only thing left is to decide you're gonna go to a place that you're not even sure you can get to. To go beyond anything that you think is possible and do the most amazing work that you've ever done. Today's show is presented by someone who's actually done it, and he's going to tell you exactly what you need to do. Roberto is special, and this is, well, this is a tour de force. Roberto standing by, we'll talk to him next. Roberto, welcome to the Professional Photographer Podcast. How you doing today?

I am doing so good. Besides the construction happening in my house, I left, so I'm in a private space now. So let's— I'm good. Let's do this. I'm doing great. How are you, man? I'm good.

I find that you've got a high from the people doing the construction or they'll ask you to help. I don't want to help. I hired you to do the work.

They don't want me to help. I would just be in the way. Yeah, you know, for sure. Most of the time, like we talked, it's better for me not to be involved. Yeah, yeah, you know, for the sake of productivity.

Hire people to handle it and let them do a good job.

That's right.

So many people have learned from you over the years and you have so much to teach, but there are people who haven't met you yet. So if they haven't, tell them who you are and what you do. Sure.

I'm Roberto Valenzuela. I used to be a wedding photographer. I am now a full-time commercial fashion photographer here in LA. I have a really beautiful studio here in downtown Los Angeles. I'm also an author of 7 books, almost 8. I'm writing my 8th one now. This is my latest book I just finished, Picture Perfect Flash. And I am an avid photography educator, and I'm a massive photography lover, I'll tell you that. I can't get enough of this industry. People tell me, do you get tired of it? I was like, I got to tell you, not to sound cheesy, but I just don't. It has so many— photography has so many cool elements. It's technical, it's artistic, it's scientific, it's software, it's tactile, it's meeting with people, it's psychology. I love it. It has it all.

Well, we can definitely tell that you love it. And my goal today is to get as much of your knowledge out onto YouTube as possible. And people that do know you and follow you obviously learn from you about posing and lighting and other things. And you shared that you got interested in posing and lighting because you thought you were terrible at it. How did you arrive at that, at that decision? And how did you learn so much about it?

Oh, I did not arrive. My clients arrived at that conclusion for me. Let's, let's set the record straight. I did not arrive anywhere. I was clueless like most of us are. We were not aware of what we're not aware of, right? It's like the old saying, you don't know what you don't know. Well, when you are surrounded by your family who supports your new photography adventure, they're going to tell you that every photo you take is amazing. Kind of like Facebook, right? It's like you post something on Facebook and they're like, this is the most amazing I have never seen. What kind of talent do you possess? Is this some sort of witchcraft? But then you find out that's just your mom giving you the, you know, sending you those messages, or your best friend, or somebody's trying to date you or something, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

So you don't know what you don't know. And until you get your butt whooped, you know, by your clients and also You realize the distinctive discomfort you feel in your gut when you're about to start trying to get people to get ready for a photograph, whether it's a wedding or a high school senior or a child portrait or a family. It doesn't matter. You always have this gut, like this feeling of imposter syndrome, or you try to kind of get there and you're like, how do I even start? Or you might even start one way and then you don't know where to go after the first one. After the first kind of like setup. So these kinds of things were so uncomfortable for me, I thought I was gonna get, I was gonna get an ulcer from, from posing. So I decided, you know what, how do you fix the ulcer situation? Why don't I just become good at it? Why don't I just get good at it? And, and, and then I don't have to worry about it anymore. So that's kind of how it started.

And are you the type of person that just takes a few classes? Did you find a mentor? Like how did you go about getting good at it?

I did everything you can imagine. I invested every penny I had on education. I took workshops. Workshops are— there were some good ones, there were some not so good ones, and I learned a lot from both the good and the bad. By the way, the bad workshops, I really started paying attention of why this was bad, and it really helped me not do those things. And the good workshops really took me to the next level. I highly suggest people spend more time in education. It was a true career-saving move for me. I also read every book at Barnes Noble you could possibly buy during those days. I probably read literally every book I could find in posing. I'm talking about, I don't know, maybe more than 15 to 20 books on the subject.

Wow.

I was very dedicated to learning how to pose simply because I didn't want to suffer through the posing process anymore. And third, I practiced my butt off. I worked. I would call my friends and buy them cheap bottles of wine from Trader Joe's. They have one called Charles Shaw, or they call it the Two Buck Chuck. And I would buy Two Buck Chucks, and because my friends didn't really know what good wine was, they thought it was just a gift with a wine. It was great. So, I spent $2 on a bottle of wine plus tax, And then I would buy people wine if they could stand in front of me once a week for 30 minutes and I could practice certain posing. I would practice body movements. I would practice how I spoke to them. I would challenge myself, like, how fast can I get to this pose with the minimum amount of words coming out of my mouth? So, I would try to say it and I would start out with like 100 words to get there. And then as I practiced, I was able to get down to like 15 words or 10 words. And now I can do it with high levels of efficiency. Wow.

We get to talk today about practice and how we can get better. And we do have 1,000 questions about lighting, but let's start with the theme of the episode about making yourself a better photographer by learning some of these things that are essential to capture the images that you want to capture. So let's start with posing. What were you doing wrong? What did you learn you were doing wrong this whole time?

First of all, posing and lighting are the fundamental— and composition and storytelling are your composition elements to build a good business. Photography should not be just a side hustle for people. It can be a full-time career. It is a business that should be respected. And like any business, as you know, if your product is good, people are more willing to buy it.

Yeah.

It's not complicated. It's just if your product is below par, people are willing to pay but much less because they may still need that product. And I mean, and one thing that's interesting about the business of photography, whether you are good or you are bad, the amount of effort it takes the photographer and the amount of effort it takes the clients to be at a photo shoot, it's tremendous. Right? The client has to get— if it's a family shoot, the client has to get clothes, has to get the family to sort of match. They have to choose a location. They have to do their hair. They have to drive. Oh my gosh. It is insane how much work it takes from the client's side to go to a photo shoot with you. It is a huge responsibility for the photographer to take this seriously. So your choices are, I don't need to grow any further because I'm already well-known in my neighborhood. or my town, and you give people average but sellable work. Or you can say, I want my clients to think of me as like the Messiah or something because I'm so— like, I want people to sing my praises in every way. And how do you inject that excitement into your clients to talk about you to their friends? You do that by providing a product that no one else can really provide. It is truly you. It is truly a reflection of who you are as an artist, and it's executed like a true professional. Those 2 things are going to make your business really flourish, right? So it started with posing. No matter how good your lighting may be, if the pose of the mom or the dad or the high school senior or the wedding or the bride or the groom, if the pose is bad, just the person is just hunched over, their rib cage is collapsed, their stomach sticking out, it doesn't matter how glorious your lighting may be, it is only lighting a terrible, terrible image of them. One thing I learned the fastest, I would try to tell my clients about how cool the composition was in their photos and how cool the lighting was. They didn't care. Because the only thing clients see is their pose. It's the only thing they see. The pose is how they react in less than 2 seconds. When they see the photo, they look at it like, oh my God, I don't look good. They don't care. But the lighting though, look at that cast light. Wow. Dang, forget the pose. I mean, I look like terrible, but I mean, look at that accent light behind my ear. Like, no one thinks like that. So first thing is first, fix my posing. And man, oh man, Pat. Oh, that was a whole story of posing. Oh my God. It's like the more you learn about posing, the more you realize you don't know, you know?

Yeah.

And it's a rabbit hole that just never ends until it kind of starts to make sense. From a second nature point of view. It becomes an instinctive reaction instead of an active memorization exercise. You do not want to memorize poses. You want to create them. You want to let people know that even if you are not an expert in posing, you can take this from the podcast right here. Ready? It's okay to trust the body of your subject, but it's not okay to trust their spine. Their spine will always betray you because the spine always looks for comfort. It always looks to slouch to be comfortable. It takes effort to lift your body up. Nobody wants to be like that. So, but you can trust their body. If you tell a subject or a client to sit down on a chair, their brain is going to make them sit down in a way that looks natural to the camera. It is your job. just to fix little tiny nuances that could occur depending on your distance to the subject, the lens you're choosing, and the lighting you're choosing. These are the little things you need to learn about posing. So if you are like, I don't want to have to go through all of this posing knowledge, I just want to get to it, at least you can start with that little nugget.

I know that when you teach lighting or talk about lighting, there are many different ways that we can use light, but light has some preset laws and some fundamentals that we need to learn about how light is used. But When it comes to posing, is there a set of preset rules of how posing works?

Yeah, so that's kind of like the— that's kind of where the problems begin, right? Your question is amazing, by the way, because that's truly where people, people begin learning posing by learning a set of rules. So you learn about, you know, family posing. You build a triangle, the triangle with people. You put the head of the person here, then another person here, here, here, here, here, and it becomes a little triangle. Or if you're doing like a photograph of a man, you're like, okay, you put his hands on his pockets and you cross his legs. And if you're doing a photograph of a female or a woman, oh, you cross your legs or you put her hand on her hip and then you do the S-curve and you learn all these things. And that's the beginning of the problems that posing should not be a set of rules. Posing, after 20 years of dedicating myself to it, posing is body language and it's It's a vibe. It's a vibe. So if you don't have a vibe that you're trying to go for, for example, let's say you're photographing a woman lawyer who's a partner at a law firm. You're not going to do hand on the hip and S-curve on her professional portrait of a woman who's an attorney, who's a partner in a law firm. You're just not going to do that. So why do we have these rules? Where if you photograph women, you do this. If you photograph men, you do that. Well, women come in all sorts of careers and heights and flavors, just like men. So you cannot apply the same rules to every woman in the world. It doesn't make any sense, right? What you want is to say, what do you want to achieve with this photo? I want people to trust me. I want them to know that I will fight for them. I want them to know that I'm serious, that I'm educated, that I'm highly qualified. That's your vibe. And a person who's a master of posing can then grab those adjectives, can grab those key elements that the person wants and understand how, what body language to create to make that exact vibe come true. And if you do that, you're in a different league.

Do you think people do that or do they come in capturing what the person looks like? Are they asking them what they're trying to say with their body and presence? Or are they just saying, okay, uh, woman, lawyer, power suit, stand like this. Are they thinking through the body language and the expression that they're trying to make with their pose?

I'm sure some people ask the subject, what would you like? But I find that not all, of course, but I would find that 98% of the people that I have seen don't know how to connect the vibe and the requests from your subject to an exact body language. Like, if you put the lawyer with her hand, with her hand sort of like this, with her finger pointed at her mouth like that, uh, because you're trying to make it look like the photo by Steve, from Steve Jobs, where he was going like this, you know, and you try to make her like that, automatically that pointy finger towards the lips makes her look sensual. You have already ruined the photograph. If you grab the lawyer's collarbones and you have a lower one and a higher one on the attorney and you accidentally turned— you accidentally tilt her head towards the higher shoulder, you now make her look much weaker. If you don't do the high shoulder tilt and you actually avoid that mistake and you kind of have both collarbones straight and then you bring your shoulders back, you automatically make her look more vulnerable. So you cannot even begin connecting the vibe or the, the, the key elements of what they're trying to, to convey with body language if you don't know. You have to start studying the body as body language, not as a set of rules. There are rules that can kind of fit into some cases like You know, if you want to photograph a woman that looks attractive or a man that looks attractive and you want to make them look more attractive, yes, there are certain things you can do. But if attraction, if physical attraction is not the vibe you're trying to go for, then these rules go out the window and your knowledge is the only thing that's going to save you. And the lack of that knowledge is what's going to break you.

Mm-hmm.

So it is a worldwide, long-time, lifelong commitment for me to help every photographer that wants to be helped because some people don't want to be helped, right? Every photographer that's listening to this or who goes to Imaging USA, it is my personal goal to really help them see the fruits and the value of becoming a posing master. And it is a skill that I cannot even imagine why you wouldn't want to have.

Mm-hmm.

You know, why would you not want to do that? And same thing with lighting. Like same thing, but posing first because posing is the first thing people see and it will elevate your business. You cannot grow your business to crazy amounts if everyone around you, every photographer in your neighborhood, your city can outpose you.

Mm-hmm.

You know, you might get away with it for like a year. You might get away with it for 2 years because your personality might be super cool. You might be super friendly and super smiley and maybe people just like you because you connect with them and that's very valuable. You cannot minimize personal connection and personality. But if they don't like the way they look at the end of the day, they're not going to care how cool you are. If they paid a lot of money and they spent a lot of time working on a photoshoot with you and they don't like the way they look, trust me, that will flip— the way they feel about you will flip real quick. And that is the beginning of your business beginning to fail. You don't want to have that. I mean, this is a business podcast after all.

That's right.

So I'm talking about not just posing for posing's sake. I'm talking about posing in regards to your business and how it can really help you and save you. And actually, it's actually more fun. You buy these expensive cameras, why not kick butt with them? Like, why not do amazing stuff with these expensive cameras? Like, God, it's so great. to be able to buy this beautiful technology just to take a mediocre photo? No. Yeah, no, it's way more fun to kick butt, you know, to do it, to excel, you know. So I mean, if you don't want to do it for yourself, do it for the, for your, for the fun you will have at the end of the day, you know.

I love that. All right, let's pivot to lighting. Obviously posing we talked about. Now let's talk about lighting. As you dove into learning everything you could about lighting and wrote the books about lighting, what changed in your knowledge and understanding of how lighting is used when you're taking pictures?

Yeah. So I would say the second step after posing is to really hit the lighting segment hard. And again, just like posing, you learn how lighting behaves. If you read a book on lighting, you're going to learn about the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. You're going to learn that the inverse square law of light starts out at the maximum level and it starts to exponentially drop as the distance increases from your subject to the light. You're going to know that dark colors absorb light more than bright colors. You're going to know that rough surfaces are going to disperse the— are going to disperse light rays in a less predictable way than smooth surfaces. Once you learn all these things, you think you got it, but you don't. It is just the beginning. You can also manipulate all of those rules In order to create a certain look. I tell people lighting is— lighting should be used to communicate, not just to illuminate. Right? Let me repeat that because it's important. Lighting should be used to communicate, not just to illuminate. It can be used to illuminate too, but that's why I said not just to illuminate. It is the main purpose of lighting. should be to invite the viewer to see or to look where you want them to look. Lighting is what shapes a person's face. If you put this light that's illuminating me straight on the side of my face, I'm going to look more mysterious and harder to read. That is a message you're conveying to the viewer. If you put this light right in front of me, flat in front of me, my face will look flat against a 2-dimensional background, and I will look like—

A robot.

like a flat Ellie or something, like a little piece of paper that's flat against the background. And I will have no pores, no wrinkles, no nothing. And it makes me look not really like a human, almost like an AI image of myself. If you put the light at a bit of a side and you have a little bit of shadow, it creates more like a 3-dimensional feel. You can keep going on the size of the light, the intensity of the light, the feathering of the light. I always tell people, we don't have to illuminate your subjects directly at a 45-degree angle. You can grab your light and feather it away from your subject and just let 10 to 12% of the edge of that light illuminate your subject and crank the power up so you can get that accent light. When you start thinking of lighting like this, you are beginning to see lighting as a form of communication, not as a form of lighting. When you start doing that, you are reaching levels that most photographers in their career might never, ever reach, even in a 30-year career where people just illuminate subjects. And also, like I said before, it's expensive to buy lighting. So why not get the best out of your lights? Your lights are your tools for your business. You can use your tools badly or you can use your tools like a master. So why not? You already spend the same amount of money either way, right?

Yeah.

So definitely use— go out there and try to say, I want to communicate how beautiful this person's cheekbones are. How do I do that with lighting? Not with anything else, just with the light. Or let's say as a practice exercise, you buy your wife a purse and she loves the purse and the purse is a purse she's wanted for a long time. Why don't you shoot an example exercise photo of her, but where the purse is what's lit instead of her as much? Or you can do an example where you buy, I don't know, the purse again or whatever, and you say, I want the texture of the purse to be the hero, not the purse. As a whole, uh, to, to be the hero. So then you, you would use a smaller light source, more almost parallel to the purse, illuminating directly, like, like at an angle. And that's going to create shadows of the texture, and it's going to make the texture of that purse come alive.

Right.

But if you don't think like that, what you're going to do is put— is grab your umbrellas that you buy, that you bought, and put them at a 45-degree angle on either side. And you're just going to fire and there's your picture, and then you're going to Photoshop the purse brighter and you're going to darken the rest of the scene and you're going to say, there you go. That makes you a digital artist. It does not make you a photographer. A photographer and a digital artist, 2 very different things. Both amazing, both highly respected, but there's a difference. A photographer can do it from the moment that person takes the picture. And the digital artist relies on digital manipulation to make the effect, or at least to try to make the same effect. But the more you manipulate pixels, the more you destroy the image and the quality of the image. And it's also not as fun to sit down for 8 hours working on a single image.

Yeah.

Because then you gain weight, you're eating chips, you're drinking wine, you know, you're not exercising. It's not, it's not good for you. It's better for you to just get it on the camera and then your editing is only 10% of, of, of what it used to be of time, time commitment-wise.

You know, I want to ask you questions about how we can get better at all this, but before we go there, I want to tie together a few things that you've said. You talked about imposter syndrome, which shows up for entrepreneurs of all different professions in so many different ways. And if we're going to start using these basic building blocks of photography, like posing and lighting and bring in a vibe, that would mean we have to have a vision. And to have a vision, we have to start to build our own confidence. Is it tough to start building that confidence? Or once you do it and start seeing progress, that's where the confidence comes from? How do we harness and defeat that imposter syndrome so we're not just capturing what they look like, we're using these tools to capture, as you say, the vibe of the person or what you're trying to communicate?

Absolutely. So let's make an example. Let's say here, I'm going to make a circle with my fingers. Okay? So this circle right here, this is your knowledge inside that circle. It's everything you know about photography. It's right there in that little circle. If in a photo shoot, you might hit that circle or you might hit around the circle, you might be close to your circle or you might be hitting right on the target, on the mark, or you might be way off. In every photo shoot, you might have a variety of things that happen. As soon as you get out of the circle and you're on the edges, you're already starting to panic because you're no longer in your comfort zone. Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely.

So one thing that I tell people is this, simplicity will always win. So if you start out with a very small skill set, let's say the size of this little water bottle cap, Okay. This is your skillset. Practice every element of that skillset you can think. Write it on a— write it down. What are some of the things you want to be able to do in the most simplest of forms? Just simple things. This could be an example like you want to create— you want to put 2 lights. One is channel 1, channel 1. One is group A, group B. You want to have one light brighter than the other. Boom. Simple. That is so easy to do.

Right.

The next exercise could be like, how fast can you get to that point? Can you do that in 20 seconds or does it take you a whole minute to make those changes? The next one could be, could you look at your remote in your flash and actually make it— make those changes happen? Put one light in group A, one light in group B, and change the power of each with your eyes closed. Can you do it by just pure feel? Right. And people say, why would you ever practice that? Because you want to go higher in your practices than you actually do need in your performances, right? Like, you don't want to just practice at your performance level. You want to practice harder, faster, better, so that when you are performing, it looks like a walk in the park. You know what I mean?

Uh-huh.

And when you get that walk-in-the-park mode, that's when your creativity comes alive. That's when your brain has permission To be creative and to think, what if I use that element outdoors? Or what if I create this look here? Or what if I use that FedEx truck to bounce light from the white paint of the FedEx truck? Or why don't I use the chrome of an old car's side view mirrors or something in order to create a catchlight on this person's purse? Like, you begin to think outside the box. You begin to have fun, in other words.

Mm-hmm.

You know, people will never experience freedom in their creativity unless they understand the technical aspects of photography. It's very hard to say, I want to change my lighting ratio, but I don't know how. So your creativity just doesn't come out. You basically stay in that circle and you never get out. Once you master everything in that circle and you practice it higher than you need to, Then you expand the circle to a bigger circle. Now it's a bigger one and it becomes— and then you start increasing that circle. You start practicing things that are already out of this little middle part. And then once you understand what those are and you have clear objectives, then you practice those once a week and then you expand to a bigger and then you expand to a bigger and you expand to a bigger.

Mm-hmm.

That circle of expansion should never stop, no matter how big or how many awards you have won at any competition in the world. Competitions and all of that are amazing. I'm so excited, but you gotta keep your mentality— has to stay like a child. It's always curious, always growing, always learning. Never let your ego stop you from learning. Never. Never let your awards or your trophy case be the brakes to your growth, you know, because you've reached a point where you think, I've made it, but you haven't. You know, you could have way more fun.

Using practice as a way to improve the knowledge and make us feel more confident. I love that. But we're busy. Like, how can we possibly practice? How much practice should we do in a month or in a week? Like, what do you prescribe?

So there's 2 kinds of practices you can do. You can do direct practicing, which is something where you sit down with a notebook and you actually practice a specific thing. And then there's also active lifestyle practice where you could actually train your brain to see things without having an actual formal practice session. For example, I'll give an example of both. Let's say you're trying to— you write down 3 adjectives, strong, confidence, vulnerable, and you do a 30-minute practice session on posing the body to give you those 3 things, to give you a pose that looks strong, and then you switch it to confidence, and then you switch it to vulnerable. Okay? That is a straight practice session with clear goals. That is deliberate practice. Then you have lifestyle, casual, indirect practice, let's call it. And that's where you could easily go drop off your friend at the airport because they're leaving. And instead of leaving the airport, stay where people say goodbye to each other and study their body language. study their emotions and their face when they're truly saying bye to a loved one. What does that look like? Where are their arms? Where is— where do they position their heads naturally? No one's watching them at the end of the day. You're sitting in your car like a creep watching these poor people. You're watching from the privacy of your car like a creep into these poor people's lives. And you're paying attention to their body language and how they come together and what is the peak of their emotion, right? You could also watch a movie and you can rewind and then go play it in slow-mo and see what— how that expression of that actor came to be. So you can you can rewind for like 5 seconds and then slowly bring it to that peak emotion and see what the body's doing. Okay? You don't have to do anything other than observe. These observations, if you do them quite often, go to the park, go to the store, go to whatever, you're building bricks of knowledge. You're building bricks. You're filling your head. With observation and, and, and you become, it becomes more intuitive. Uh, you're not gonna see progress. It's not like you're never gonna say, oh, I was at a level 2.5, but now I can see that I'm a level 2.8. Like, you're never gonna see that. And that's the problem why people don't practice. They don't see there, there isn't a numerical attribute to their progress. It's just simply, it's just happening, but it's in the subconscious. happening. When people come to my posing workshops, which I teach all over the country, and I encourage everyone to look at my Instagram and follow me on Instagram to see when I'm going to be teaching next. I think every photographer that photographs people should take these kinds of workshops. They don't have to take them from— they don't have to use my workshops. I don't care who they go with, but they should learn. Right. I tell my attendees of my workshops, I'm so glad you're here, but don't expect you to pay for this workshop, stay at this workshop, learn at this workshop, and then you have some numerical value of your progress. It's impossible for me to offer that. What I can offer you is comfort and knowing that with this growth, you will feel more confident posing people. You will stop acting and posing with a permission slip method and you will become more of an authority figure method. And that transition makes a client go from, does this guy know what he's doing? To, I like this guy. Those are the 2 very distinct feelings that a person can have towards you.

We need to hear more about that. Permission slip language, authority method. Okay, you need to give us more because that made my ears go up like a whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Explain that because if someone's using a permission slip method, it sounds like that's ruining their authority with the client.

It just happens naturally, right? Because photographers are nice people and you're talking to a stranger or somebody who you don't really know them that well. You might have had a meeting or 2 with them. So when you're trying to pose them, automatically the photographer feels like they have to be posing them or interacting with them in a permission slip way, which is something like this. Excuse me, Jeremy, would you mind possibly consider putting your arm— only if you don't get angry about it, if you're cool, could you put your arm over the fence? But not if it hurts, of course. You can always tell me if you're hurting because I don't want to hurt you. I just want to make sure that you get this. Would you— would that be something you might want to consider doing? Oh my gosh, it is like 57 words to say nothing.

Mm-hmm.

You know, but instead you can say something like, hey, Jeremy, you know what? I have an idea that I think is gonna look really good. See this little fence behind you? Let's put that to rest your arm to make it look like you're just chilling and it just looks natural. Let's do it. Get yourself there. Get yourself comfortable. Boom. It's gonna be awesome. People are like, hell yeah. And then they do it and they like you. They want you to be in control, just like I want the guys working on my house to be in control of the construction. I do not want to be— I don't want them asking me, hey, Roberto, do you think maybe we should use this plaster style because it has a dry capability at 4.2 hours versus— No, I don't know what plaster you should use or what hardware you should use. I just want it to be done. Clients respect you more when you are in the second group where you're more confident and excited about what you're telling them to do. You become more of an authority figure, but a friendly one. The first one is called the permission slip photographer. That guy or that woman, basically, they're going to like you, because you're so polite, but inside their subconscious, they're going to have a little tickle in the back of their head thinking, oh boy, I hope these photos come out good because I'm not really feeling this photographer being like at the level that I thought they were going to be. And you will never know that as a photographer. You will just be thinking, oh my God, everything's great. You go home and you tell your spouse, oh, my photo shoot went amazing, but you have no idea that the client is thinking, when they're in the car and they're no longer with you and they're talking to their spouse, they're like, what was that? Like, I was— that— I hope they know what they're doing because I wasn't feeling it. Okay? And you don't want that conversation to happen in the privacy of their car.

It's interesting that you bring that up because with your clientele where you're at in Beverly Hills, rock stars, movie stars, musicians, whatever, I think You know, folks that aren't doing that would understand the concept that you're sharing, that, oh well, Roberto's shooting a movie star, of course he has to be the authority, or they may question it. It is a new piece of information for people that aren't doing what you're doing to think the mom in St. Louis is questioning whether or not you know what you're doing. This could really kick off, uh, business behavior that goes beyond just posing. It's more how you show up in all ways, isn't it?

Exactly. And it also does some psychology that plays a major role. When you are the permission slip photographer, the chances of your clients disliking your photos increases exponentially. When you are the confident, friendly photographer and they see you like an authority figure, you could take the same exact photos that the permission slip photographer got, and the chances of them liking their photos increases exponentially. Okay? It is easier for people to like the work of someone they respect than to like the work of someone they're doubting their skills.

Mm-hmm.

You know, if they are doubting your skill set, they're not going to be that excited. It is an out there. You are starting off in a negative position. But when you're an authority and you have friendliness to you and you have a respectful tone but still confident, then you are starting out in a position of positivity where like, I like what this guy's doing or this girl's doing. Even if they may not understand the photo, they say, well, he's an artist. There must be a reason why they did that because he's an artist. That's his vision. I like it. I like it. It's different than what I would have chosen. I like it. But if you do the same thing with the permission slip, they'll be like, the hell is this? Like, what the hell? Why am I doing this? That's not me. So it goes from, that's not me, that's not naturally me, to, that's not me, but I like the vision. I like the version of me that this photographer created. It's cool. And that's why you hire a professional photographer to be able to create something that the subject may not, may not, may not be used to. You can give them that option, but you can never, you can never get there and them liking it by having the permission slip method.

I love hearing you talk about the psychology of photography. And one of the things that many photographers will face on a weekly basis is a client that comes in that hates getting their picture taken. They feel shy, they're intimidated, they don't want to be there. When that happens to you, how do you handle it?

You know, that happens to everyone, right? Like, especially when I started my career, I started with weddings and I used to shoot engagement pictures. And that, boy, that's like, that's a tough one because an engagement shoot is not an engagement shoot. It is like literally a test to see how good you are as a photographer before the wedding. And let the record show, by the way, to everyone listening, that I got fired after engagement shoots Several times.

No.

I did. I got fired from engagement shoots. I would do the engagement shoot, the photos came. I was doing the permission slip method because I wasn't sure of myself. I got fired. I would get a call 3 or 4 days later. They would ask for all these edits. I tried to do the edits. I already knew things were not going well. And then I got a call from the bride or the groom. They're like, you know what, Roberto? really appreciate you, but we just didn't feel like we were working together seamlessly. They always tried to say it in a nice way. They didn't say your work sucked, but that's what they're saying. You know, they were like, we were just not a great match, and I think we're gonna go in a different direction for our wedding. And that didn't happen once to me. It happened several times. Um, and I want people to know that I wasn't born a good photographer. I became good by obsessively dedicating myself to not sucking anymore.

Mm-hmm.

Sorry to be so crude about it, but there comes a point that, do you want to continue being a photographer or do you want to change careers now? Because it's time to switch. And I said to my wife, I was going to make this work. And I meant it. I was going to make this work, but not because we have immediate gratification with our cameras, seeing the screen and seeing the photo, that doesn't mean that we have the right not to work like true artists. You don't tell a concert pianist to never practice and then expect them to perform perfectly in concert. You don't tell that to a violinist or a circus performer or anything. It takes a lot of constant discipline and dedication and consistency to achieve any kind of skill that's worth talking about. Why is photography different? It's not. But photographers are the only artists that I can think of in the world that never practice their craft. They practice in the sense that they're shooting their clients, but that should be a performance. That should not be a practice. And I am pretty sure when I say this. I just saw an interview with Alex Honnold, the guy that climbed El Capitan and did all this stuff in free solo. He said— they asked him how many times does he climb. He goes, I have to climb every day because in the climbing community, if you skip 2 or 3 days, you're not the same climber the 4th day.

Yeah.

Isn't that crazy?

Yeah.

Like, these are people who are like nonstop, lifelong climbers, and if they skip 3 days, you're no longer the same climber on the 4th day. Imagine if a photographer had that mentality saying, if you don't practice your photography constantly, you're not the same person when you do pick up your camera for a client. And you're not. You're not the same person. You know, we— I am a strong believer that we can do better. And everyone that's scared of AI taking over your jobs and all of this, it's just because you're just not there yet. A true photographer is always going to get hired. The art of photography is always going to be in demand. Capturing emotion and the timing and the composition and all of that is still— people are still going to want, I don't know for how many more years, I'm guessing for a long time, to be taken by a human being.

A person.

Friends with iPhones are never going to replace the skill of a master photographer. Never. They may get more angles, but most of them will just be trash.

Hmm.

So I do think that we can do better. I will continue pushing the industry to maybe consider opening up their camera bag and trying to practice for 20 minutes a week, not 20 minutes a day, not 20 minutes 3 times a day, I'm saying come up with something in that little circle of knowledge and try to practice that for 20 minutes a week or 30 minutes a week and make that as part of your— part of your lifestyle. That is part of what you do. That is part of your routine.

You know, earlier you said something that may have, like, gotten someone in the soft belly, like, ooh, wow, I wonder if he's talking about me. You said something along the lines of, You're doing photos that are good enough to sell, but that's about it. Is it possible that if they're not practicing, they can be a professional but not an artist? And that's the real difference between being dedicated to your craft? Because this interview has been full of you demonstrating again and again and again that I'm going to take this serious, I'm going to be borderline obsessive, I'm going to learn everything I can because my ceiling is limitless if I dedicate myself to it. And what you're explaining now, this Practice versus performance and taking practice seriously, is that really pointed at the people that are professionals but not artists and they could be if they just put in the practice?

See, that's an amazing question right there, but that's why you're the man. That's why you're the man, okay? After— there should be a mic and you just drop it right now with that, you know, with that question, okay? See what I'm saying? Just drop that mic. In fact, drop the whole thing. There is definitely a difference between a professional photographer and an artist, right? A professional photographer knows how a camera works, knows the ins and outs of photography, has knowledge of outdoor, indoor lighting, strobes, natural light, posing. He's a professional photographer. An artist is somebody who has all of that, but has an actual vision that speaks to that person. Right? An artist is a person whose life experiences, good or bad, has transformed the way they see the world, and that transformation comes out in their photographs. That's why there is very few photographers that can say, when they see a photo, they say, that looks like the work of this person. If you can, for example, Let me give you an example. Here is my new book that I wrote, okay? Picture Perfect Flash, okay? And I'm not doing this to show the book. I just want to show an example, okay? I mean, if you want to get the book, it's right here. But you notice this photograph has like a romance to it. Has like, even though this is a photo of Miss Universe, it— It's a beautiful photo.

It—

I'm hiding most of her face with hair, but it has some sort of romance to it. It's the eyelids, it's the lighting, it's the softness of everything. This is very much my style. It has impact, but it's well executed. Like, if you look at the— if you look at, um, my lighting book, my other lighting book here, This one, it has like dynamics and energy to it. Just like this, it has energy and dynamics. Here is the hair moving across. Here is the fringe moving all through the frame. It creates this look that's like well-executed, really good attention to detail, but it still has that energy that you can feel, right? When you look at Let's see here. When you look at my— look how big that wedding book is. When you look at my wedding book here, this is one of my 3 books. Same thing. It has this magical composition and it looks like a painting and it's really well executed and it has really cool— the posing looks really natural and it just looks fun. They're just in this little willow world, fantasy world and all these different things. My vision doesn't change because of the person in front of me. I'm very clear that I like elegance combined with dynamics in my work. I like it when it has some quirkiness that people don't quite understand. There's always some oddball feature in my work. that people just are like, what? What? That is so weird. I love to get conversations started with the portraits I take because they're not just a person standing in front of a camera in a park.

Mm-hmm.

You know, I, as an artist, I just cannot put my subjects at a park and have them stand there and take a picture of them. That's just not who I am as an artist. But I didn't become an artist until I understood what my artistic vision actually is. What is my foundation as an artist? When I teach at Imaging USA for PPA, I will be teaching a lot of classes this year in 2027. I'm sorry. And I will be telling the students and the people attending my classes, like, who are you as an artist? What photos do you like? What photos speak to you? Let me see your work. And when they see— show me their work, it is like, a combination of 100 styles, and the photos may be good, but that doesn't mean that you have defined your style. That person is still finding their style, and they will continue looking for it until you decide to stop and really take a look inside and find out what is it that you love about your work or other people's work. Write that down. When you see a pattern, that's becoming more your style. Does that make sense?

It does for sure. And we're almost out of time, but I cannot resist. I cannot miss this opportunity to ask you this question. One of the world's greatest music producers, Rick Rubin, wrote a book, and in his book he talked about artists are performing for themselves. They're not performing for the listener. Do you think that translates to your work, that you're performing for yourself and challenging the art that comes out of the camera?

To some extent, because you do have to satisfy clients' expectations, right? I'm a fashion photographer. The clients that hire me and the designers, they also have a vision that they want from their clothes. So it is a combined artistic— it is a combined project, right?

Mm-hmm.

They have a vision for their clothes, And then they hire photographer A, B, or C, depending on who they think their artistic vision is a match or is aligned with what they want. So yes, you do have to have a vision and you are doing it for yourself, with the exception that your vision also has to be aligned with your client's vision. What you don't want is your client's vision to completely take over your vision because then you're just a button pusher at that point. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And because of that, I tell my clients, show me what you want. I will then show you based on what you want, what I would do. And let's see if we're aligned.

Yeah.

And if we, if we are aligned, Then I tell them, I will be photographing, I will be starting my photos like this, and I would appreciate not to have input when it's— an input is interruption of my flow. Does that make sense?

Sure.

So are we in agreement with what I'm going to do? Here's the images I want to create. Here's your vision. Here's my vision. Are we aligned? Yes, we are. Okay, then respect me. and respect my work. And because, by the way, in my line of work, when I take a picture, it goes to Capture One. And when it goes to Capture One, everyone that's involved has a live link and everyone can see every photo on their phones or on their iPads. The photos just appear as I take them. So you have people in Spain, in France, in Germany, in Mexico, like looking at the photos.

Wow.

And even the designer could be sitting in his office in Paris or something, and they're looking, and they have, they're in a table with like 6 or 7 people, and they're watching a big screen TV with my photos coming up in their monitor, and they're all talking about it.

Wow.

And unless I am way off base, I tell them to respect the process because I need to focus. If they start interrupting me, my flow goes out the window. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

So yeah, I do believe that an artist is a person who has a clear vision of what they are, what they stand for, who they are, what tickles their fancy, what gets them excited, what gets them up in the morning. And they are not just experimenting with everything. Those are people who are still looking for their style. And there is a professional photographer on the other side who is a person who has knowledge of photography and they make money out of it, but they're still trying to become an artist. Those are two, two very different sides of the spectrum, you know?

Absolutely. We have this much time left, so I got to get a quick answer from you on one thing and then we'll wrap up the interview. Your provocative point on how to make a shy subject warm up during a session. We need to hear that because it's so good. So you've got someone there, they don't want their picture taken. How do you go about making them comfortable? Love the way that you do this.

Sure. No, I should have started that when I was talking about the engagement pictures. But when I started the engagement photos, when I was doing the engagement photos, I got off track because I was talking about how they were— it's like a test, right?

Yeah.

But when a client is shy, which happens often, it is better to respect their personal space and give them extra personal space. So the lens choice you, you choose actually helps them become more comfortable with you. A 70-200mm lens is going to make you, the photographer, be about 15 feet, 20 feet away from your subject. At that distance, your lens, which is still big, but at that distance, your lens looks a lot smaller to the subject. Second, at that distance, you're not intruding in their personal space. Third, You're not in their face and it feels intrusive. And fourth, they feel less vulnerable when you are further away. They can still have a moment. One thing I tell them is, guys, to start out the photoshoot, I'm going to start out over there. You guys can stand here. And I give them a very simple task to do. We're going to interact with each other this way just for 10 seconds. Can you do that?

Sure.

And then I say, there is no wrong. Just, I need you to interact naturally for 10 seconds. Occasionally do this or do that. Great. I go far away, 70 to 200. They're doing it. I'm doing my thing. I'm not yelling at them. I'm letting them be themselves. That already has done magic in psychology to break the ice. Don't show them the photo in your camera screen. Don't show them. Just show excitement from your face. If you are dealing with shy clients and you like a photo and you accidentally show them the photo and they don't like it, you're screwed. Their energy towards you is out the window. So don't start out on the wrong foot.

Yeah.

But you cannot go wrong By you looking and saying you having this excitement towards you. One thing I do that I can do that to help the listener of this podcast is grab your camera, go to the settings in your camera, and say that you want every photo that you take to show up on your viewfinder for 2 seconds. Okay? Some photographers turn that off. I would say turn it on. So in the viewfinder, not on the screen in the back, in the viewfinder.

Okay.

So as you're posing and you can see the photo come up in your viewfinder, only you can see it. So your excitement is like, oh my gosh, these are looking great. Look at this. It's like, who are you people? Who are you? You're killing me right now. I'm not— I can't charge for this. You know, you're making this too easy for me. You know, and you say all this stupid stuff and then the people are just like, this guy, And your excitement gets them excited. You're far away. They feel safe. They're in their safe zone, right? And then as you get more comfortable with them, you can switch your lens to a 24-70 and you're closer. And then once you get that and you're already hanging out and you're BFFs, then you can even switch to like a 35 or a 24 to create some dramatic exaggerated perspectives. And they are at that point, they will already allow you to be this close to them. But if you start out this close to them thinking that's, that's just your way of doing things, you're not letting psychology play a role in your— in the success of your shoot. Psychology will play a role in the success of your shoot or your failure of your shoot. And the photographer who's not aware of psychology is a photographer who's on a one-way ticket to failure very quickly. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. And we have the opportunity not only through this interview but through speaking engagements, the conference that you throw, and the new book that you're working on to learn from you. So tell us about the new book. What's going on with that?

Oh my gosh, my book, I'm pumped about it. So I wrote this one, I wrote this one 12 years ago. It's called Picture Perfect Posing. It became a top seller. This book is now out of print. If you go to Amazon right now, this book is like $200 right now. Okay, it's out of print. There's only a few left in the world. I don't know. This book has been a life-changing, a career-changing book for me and for many people. But now it's time to expand on this knowledge and realize that posing comes in— posing comes in lifestyle posing, dynamic posing, prop posing, headshot posing. Not just one style of posing, but all these 5 different genres of posing. So I'm writing a new book, which I'm Very much looking forward to seeing it in my hands. I want to hold it in my hands because I just want to have it, and I want people to buy it and read it and hopefully conquer posing little by little. When you combine the new book and you attend my workshops in posing, you're on your way. It's not going to make you a master overnight. I'm never going to tell people those marketing words. The only way you're going to become a master is by attending the classes and practicing on your own. That's it. There's no shortcuts to it. And for that reason, I put together the Photo Creators Conference. I wanted a place for people to go that has more of a boutique feel where you could actually be part of the instructor's shoot. So in the Photo Creators Conference, there is no speaker that's on a stage talking to you. You are in the ground, boots in the ground with the teacher, shooting a specific concept. It is like a full-on thing. You guys check out the website, photocreators.com. There is— everything is hands-on. And I know that term is way overused, but in this conference, I mean it. Like, you are in a small group of only 15 to 16 people per teacher, best teachers in the world. Like, you're talking the very best out there. And you get to be with them. You get to hear from them. You get to try out the concept. You get to get feedback from the instructor directly on how you did, and then you get to shoot again once the teacher already gives you feedback. You don't really get that at huge conferences. So it is created to become more like a, let's say, like a graduate education, like a master's degree or something like that. It's for people that say, I really want to master stuff. I want to get there. You do it through conferences that are like this, more boutique. Only 150 people can attend. So it's very small.

That is small. And at Imaging USA, we get you on stage a ton. We're going to learn from you in 2027. So what do you have in store for us at Imaging this year?

Okay. At Imaging, I am going to— it's going to be a full schedule here. I am going to teach a pre-con, so get ready for that. I am teaching a platform. I might be teaching a Spanish class. I might be teaching a business of wedding photography, which is something people should attend because it will spill to other portrait genres, not just weddings. I will probably be teaching at the Canon stage, at the Canon booth at Imaging USA. I love the Imaging USA community and the PPA community. They're so supportive. They put together a show out of pure passion for the art. Just wonderful people at Imaging USA, and I can't wait to be a part of that.

Can't wait to see you there in Charlotte. And thank you for all the time today on the show. It was just a pleasure to learn with you, and we'll see you at Imaging USA in January.

We'll see you, Pat. It's been an honor and a pleasure hanging out with you for the hour. Take care, man. Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the Professional Photographer Podcast. Was I wrong?

No.

Roberto crushed it, and I hope that he's inspired you to take your camera out of the bag and put in the work to take your talent to the next level. Do us a favor and leave a comment on the episode. What did he say that got you thinking? Like and subscribe to the show so more people will find his advice and we can help improve photographers everywhere. One other thing, if you're not yet a member of Professional Photographers of America, Well, you're missing out on conversations like this and what they offer— incredible resources like equipment insurance, top-notch education, and a supportive community of photographers ready to help you succeed. It's perfect for photographers who are serious about growing their business in a sustainable and profitable way. At PPA, you belong here. Discover more about membership at ppa.com. That's ppa.com. I'm Pat Miller, founder of the Small Business Owners Community and the host of the show. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you right here next time. Take care.