Let’s talk about helping your subjects relax during a photoshooting.
People who rarely pose for photos tend to arrive tense and a bit stressed for their session. Your task as a professional is to make them feel as comfortable and relaxed as possible to get natural and beautiful shots.
Here are some of the tips that find most useful to make your clients relax during a photoshooting.

COMMUNICATE WITH THEM THROUGH THE ENTIRE SHOOT
Beyond communicating direction during a photoshoot, it’s a great tool to talk to your client as much as you can throughout your entire shoot. Remember that pre-shoot chat I recommended? Use some of the topics you talked about with your client or model at that time as points of things to make conversation about. Make jokes (when appropriate). Ask questions.When you talk to your client during a shoot, it makes you more than just a photographer – it makes you a relatable human being. I often even turn the conversation away from the subject and banter or joke with my makeup artist or assistant about something very general that my subject might even find funny and relatable. Just be sure whatever you do, that it comes natural to you, otherwise it just comes across awkwardly and the client will notice.

GET TO KNOW YOUR CLIENT BEFORE THE PHOTO SHOOT
One of the top ways I have noticed that gets my clients to relax during a photo shoot – no matter if it’s a portrait shoot or a fashion shoot – is to try to get to know your subject prior to them stepping in front of the camera. With my portrait clients, I tend to offer my clients coffee, tea and chocolate before the session and speak about life, about thair hobbies, job, if they have a significant other, if they play sports, their career goals, if they’re in school I ask them what are they studying and how long have they lived in Belgium. This really helps people to relax a lot. I actually made great friends with some of my past clients and I’m really happy about it 😉

SHOW THEM A FEW PHOTOS ALONG THE WAY
I feel it’s really important to show a client a few shots along the way during the shoot. It’s a very uneasy feeling to blindly get in front of a camera and not know how the images are coming out. This is a great opportunity with your portrait clients who might have low self-confidence to show them how amazing they look in photographs to spike not only confidence in themselves, but confidence in you, as the photographer.