From test shoot to portfolio

A test shoot is a shoot arranged to develop or evaluate rather than to deliver client work. No brand is paying, no product has to be sold, and the images belong to the people who made them. For most new faces it is the first thing that happens after being taken on, and it is where a portfolio comes from — there is no other source at the beginning.

The word covers two quite different arrangements, and confusing them is the first mistake.

Who arranges it and who pays

Agency tests. The agency picks the photographer, sets the brief, and often brings hair and make-up. It knows which frames are missing from your book and shoots against that gap. This is the productive kind, because somebody is directing the shoot towards a commercial purpose rather than towards a mood.

TFP arrangements. Time for print, in the older phrasing: a photographer, a model and usually a hair or make-up artist work together, nobody pays anybody, and everyone takes images for their own portfolio. These are legitimate and useful, and the quality range is enormous. Look at the photographer's existing work before agreeing, and check that they shoot the kind of images you need rather than the kind they enjoy.

There is one arrangement that is neither. If an agency requires you to pay for a test with a nominated photographer as a condition of representation, it is earning from you rather than from bookings, and the photographs are the product being sold. Our position on fees is stated in one line on the page for talent, and any agency should be willing to state theirs as plainly.

Digitals come first

Before any styled shoot, an agency needs digitals: plain, unedited frames in daylight against a bare wall — front, profile, full length — with no make-up and hair down. They are not portfolio images and are not meant to be flattering. They are the reference set that tells a client what you actually look like before hair, make-up and lighting get involved, and clients ask for them by name at every casting.

The full specification is the same set you send when you first write in. Keep them current; digitals more than three months old get politely ignored.

The test is the other half of the pair. Digitals show what you are. The test shows what you can be turned into.

What a first test should produce

Four to six usable frames, not a gallery. The measure of a good test is how many images survive the edit, and a shoot that produces two hundred nearly identical frames has usually produced nothing.

Aim for coverage rather than volume. A clean beauty frame, close enough to show skin and expression. A full-length in something plain, standing straight, showing the body honestly — this is the frame clients ask for most and the one beginners shoot least. Something in movement, because anything with video attached needs to know you can walk. And one styled frame that reads as a client's world: a shop, a campaign, a magazine page, rather than a costume.

Editorial tests are a different exercise with a different value, closer to how an editorial story is actually made — the subject develops while shooting and a portion of the day is deliberately spent on things that will not be used. Worth doing, once there is something solid underneath.

Preparing for the day

The practical list is short and almost entirely about skin and marks.

Sleep, and drink water the day before rather than the morning of. Do not have a haircut or a colour done in the days beforehand; if something has to be trimmed, do it a week out. Avoid facials, waxing, new products and anything else your skin has not met before — a reaction two days before a shoot is a cancelled shoot. Arrive with clean hair and bare skin unless you have been told otherwise, because hair and make-up would rather start from nothing than remove someone else's work.

Nails plain and short. Bring nude and black underwear with no elastic that marks, and change out of tight socks, waistbands and bra straps early — the marks take the best part of an hour to fade and they hold up the entire shoot. Bring your own basics: jeans that fit properly, a plain white t-shirt, a plain black top, simple heels. And eat before you come. A ten-hour day on an empty stomach shows in the frames by the afternoon.

On the day

Ask what the plan is at the start — how many looks, what each one is for, what time the light changes. Knowing the shape of the day makes it much easier to pace yourself.

Ask to see a frame early. Not constantly, and not to critique it, but once at the beginning so you know what is working; most photographers will show you and the ones who won't will say so. Then learn their cues. Every photographer counts differently, and a shoot gets substantially better once you can hear the difference between "hold that" and "keep going".

Movement is smaller than beginners expect. The gap between a dead frame and a usable one is often a centimetre of chin or a shifted weight, not a new pose. And rest properly between setups rather than reaching for your phone — the face relaxes differently, and it shows.

Rights, releases and credit

Agree usage before the shutter, including on unpaid shoots. Who may publish the images, where, for how long, and whether they can ever be used commercially. A test image that later turns up in an advertisement is not a test image, and it is a usage somebody should have paid for.

Get it in writing. A release for a TFP shoot can be two paragraphs in an email, and having it costs nothing. Not having it is how a photograph you shot for your book ends up on a billboard belonging to a brand you have never heard of.

Credit is a convention, not a courtesy: photographer, hair, make-up, styling, and the agency. Post the frames with the credits attached. It is how the small network that produces test shoots keeps working, and it is noticed.

Turning frames into a book

A portfolio shows what you can be booked for. That sounds obvious and it is the rule people break, because the images we like are rarely the images that sell us.

Keep the edit tight — somewhere between ten and twenty images is a working range for a first book, and a strong ten beats a padded twenty every time. Sequence it so the first three frames say what you are; most people never reach the end. Then remove anything you would not want to be booked to repeat. If a shot is beautiful but represents work you cannot or will not do, it is working against you.

The book and the comp card are different tools that get confused constantly. The book is the long argument, shown in a meeting; the card is the short one, left behind afterwards. What belongs on the card, in what format and at what size, is set out in your first comp card.

The version that actually travels is digital. A PDF that stays under a few megabytes so it clears corporate mail servers, and a profile page on the agency site — ours sit under the boards — which is what a client looks at before they look at anything else. Keep those two in step with each other and with your current appearance.

Warning signs at a test

Some of these are about quality and some are about safety, and the safety ones are not negotiable.

Anyone charging you for a test they arranged. Nudity or lingerie introduced on the day rather than agreed in advance and in writing — an unbriefed request on set is a request made deliberately at the moment you have least room to refuse. A shoot at a private flat with nobody else present. No release, and reluctance to provide one. Pressure to hand over identity documents. A photographer who will not name previous clients or show a portfolio.

Take someone with you to a first test. A professional will not mind, and will often suggest it before you do. Anyone who treats that as a lack of trust has answered the question for you — the same test that applies to a first approach from a scout.

The whole point of the early tests is to arrive at a small set of images that describe you accurately to somebody who has thirty seconds. Everything else — the styling, the location, the number of frames — is in service of that, and most of it can be thrown away.