© Patrick Roddie 2009

I recently interviewed well-known Burning Man photographer Patrick Roddie on Advancing Your Photography. Roddie is a self-taught photographer and he shares some great tips for portrait photography that he’s learned while shooting his Burning Man photos for the past 13 years.

Patrick doesn’t follow a strict checklist of techniques when it comes to photographing people. Instead, he focuses on connecting with people and capturing the moment. You’ll see examples of how he does this in our show, along with his stunning results.

He told me he first learned photography by taking pictures of “stuff,” and wasn’t sure how to approach and take pictures of people, he was a bit timid in fact.  When he started shooting at Burning Man he said his photography took a radical shift and he overcame his fear of capturing intimate and candid photographs. As a point of advice, he said if you are yourself and trust yourself, capturing portraits are much easier than you may think.

Roddie approaches every portrait by maintaining eye contact with his subject as he frames the photo in his mind and raises his camera to quickly take the shot. If you worry too much about lenses or F-Stops, you might miss the moment. But on the other hand he describes how you have to have your equipment always on the ready, like an emergency kit—don’t get caught off guard.

Tune in to AYP and watch the show. Then tell me what you learned and attach a sample of your own candids or get out and capture your own images and send them along!