vulnerability

How Vulnerability Helps Me To Take Portraits That Count

vulnerability

Dear Folks,

So many of the questions that arrive in my inbox are about how I take photos full of emotions.

How do I get people to laugh or jump, forget about me, or blow me a kiss?

Well, here’s my secret. It is my willingness to be vulnerable.

When we are in a vulnerable state we are wide open, we have our hearts on the line and we are willing to let people see it. We show them we are not perfect and don’t have answers all the time and that is OK.

vulnerable

For many of us, it feels dangerous but as the beautiful Brene Brown says ‘I believe that vulnerability – the willingness to be “all in” even when you know it can mean failing and hurting – is brave.”

When I am taking photos, I dare to show people that I am as vulnerable as they are even though they are the one in front of the camera.

In 2016, I was given the biggest compliment by a niece who I worked with for a whole year in Paris. She told me, ‘You don’t care what people think of you!’

For a minute, I was almost offended and then she explained, “No matter who you are with on a shoot, (including some famous folk) you goof around and make a fool of yourself and you don’t decide things based on what other people think of you.”

vulnerable, vulnerability, Carla Coulson photography

I loved her point of view. I will be discussing vulnerability along with other wonderful topics in the Heartland Workshop this October in Puglia and sharing all my photography secrets.

If you would like to take photos with more emotion and do it with confidence, I would love to teach you how. I have had one cancellation and would love to help you take your portraits and interiors to a new level.

You can read all about the workshop HERE.

If you have any questions, please send us a note to workshops@carlacoulson.com

P.S. You check out Brene Brown’s TED Talk HERE.

You can choose courage or you can choose comfort. You cannot have both.” – Brene Brown

 

Related Post: Start With A Vision

 

Paris Film Noir – Portraits With Soul

carla coulson, paris film noir, paris portrait, paris photographer, black and white photography

All Photos Copyright Carla Coulson

Dear Friends,

I gave myself permission  this weekend to go out and take the photos my heart wants to take.

The minute the weather turned to Autumn in Paris my inner photographer muse reared her beautiful head and said ‘hey babe, let’s go and shoot those pics that are rolling around in your head‘.

You see, I have a photography muse that comes to me at night, she wakes me up sometimes, prods me in my side and puts images in my head that I am yet to take. Sometimes it is so strong that I am frustrated the next day if I can’t grab my camera and go and shoot.

She’s pushy my muse, she taunts me, she teases me and she is the thing that keeps it fresh when I feel like my photography is as stale as week old ‘Tuscan bread’ (and I can promise you that is like a rock).

carla coulson, paris film noir, paris portrait, paris photographer, black and white photography

My muse put these pics in my head a couple of weeks ago and I have been busting to get them out of my head and on film (well you know what I mean).

I had the great fortune to photograph the beautiful Isabelle Thomas, the stylist and author of Paris Street Style and numerous others and she writes the very chic blog Mode Personelle recently and she loved the idea so we gave it a whirl around the park.

The pics came out exactly as I imagined… hmmmm….

 

carla coulson, paris film noir, paris portrait, paris photographer, black and white photography

A beautiful woman in Paris, part of Paris, one just as beautiful as the other. Sometimes un-observed, shot through a cafe window, running down a street, waiting for a friend, channeling Bridget Bardot and laughing hard, loud and unapologetically.

carla coulson, paris film noir, paris portrait, paris photographer, black and white photography

carla coulson, paris film noir, paris portrait, paris photographer, black and white photography

carla coulson, paris film noir, paris portrait, paris photographer, black and white photography

carla coulson, paris film noir, paris portrait, paris photographer, black and white photography

carla coulson, paris film noir, paris portrait, paris photographer, black and white photography. portraits

carla coulson, paris film noir, paris portrait, paris photographer, black and white photography

carla coulson, paris film noir, paris portrait, paris photographer, black and white photography

carla coulson, paris film noir, paris portrait, paris photographer, black and white photography

carla coulson, paris film noir, paris portrait, paris photographer, black and white photography

All Photos Copyright Carla Coulson

So my lovely friends, I have created a new portrait shoot called Paris Film Noir, it’s unapologetically loose, it’s purely black and white, it’s grainy, it’s artistic, there is interference and reflection there is  voyeurism. It’s pure love and creativity.

If you feel like being the girl caught on film in Paris soon check this out.. 

“The last time I saw Paris, her heart was warm and gay, I heard the laughter of her heart in every street café.” Oscar Hammerstein II

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Check out my Portrait Lightroom Presets here.