I started my career photographing families. I sent out an email to 15 friends and offered to photograph their families at the beach one day for free to help me practice my photography skills and to build my portfolio should I decide I actually liked photography enough to start a business doing it. From those 15 emails, I photographed 10 of those families and I built my entire business, eventually branching out into weddings. I learned everything by trial and error – my favorite way to learn. Though, it would’ve been really nice if I had someone who was there to coach me through these first 10 family portrait sessions, giving me advice on things that I could’ve done better.

It’s not every day you get to shoot with an award winning photographer and have them give you pointers on how you shoot. In the following video, photographer Tamara Lackey, goes along on a photo shoot with two executives from Nations Photo Lab as the two men try their hand at children’s portraiture.

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Tamara Lackey is well known and respected in the industry and has a photography studio based in North Carolina. She is a Nikon USA Ambassador, a speaker, an author of numerous books about portraiture, hosts her own web show called reDefine Show and has seen her work featured in highly respected publications.

[REWIND: TIPS ON CAPTURING ROMANTIC PORTRAITS OF COUPLES WITH TAMARA LACKEY]

Harvis Kramer (Chief Operating Officer, Nations Photo) and Jonathan Weinstock (Executive Vice President, Nations Photo) are former event photographers and are photographing some family portraits under the tutelage of Tamara.

In the video, Tamara talks about how to ensure all of your subjects are in focus and gives some lighting, posing, interaction and composition tips. This 12.5 minute video is full of great little tips to help you improve on photographing family portraits.

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Watch ‘5 Photography Tips with Award Winning Photographer Tamara Lackey’

[Via iso1200/ Nations Photo, images via screencaps]