Inside the Portrait: A Four-Hour Lighting & Direction Masterclass at B&H New York 13th August 2026

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There's a moment, going back through the frames from a sitting, where you can feel the difference between a photograph that merely records a face and one that holds the room. It is rarely a question of the camera. Almost always it comes down to two things: how the light falls, and how the person in front of you was directed in the seconds before the shutter.

Inside the Portrait: A Four-Hour Lighting & Direction Masterclass at B&H (Rory Lewis Photographer)

Inside the Portrait: A Four-Hour Lighting & Direction Masterclass at B&H (Rory Lewis Photographer)

That gap — between the forgettable and the unforgettable — is what I want to spend four hours on at the B&H Event Space in New York.

I'm teaching a hands-on portrait masterclass for beginner and intermediate photographers, built around the parts of the craft that never fit neatly into a tutorial: the live, slightly unpredictable business of building a setup, reading a subject, and adjusting both until the frame finally does what you want it to.

What we'll actually do

This isn't a lecture you sit through. You'll be working alongside me and two professional models for the full session, moving between live lighting demonstrations, short focused teaching segments, and — most importantly — your own time behind the camera.

Across the afternoon I'll build and break down multiple lighting setups in real time. You'll see exactly where I start, how I place the key light, what I'm watching for in the shadows, and how a setup that looks finished can be transformed by a single change of angle or distance. I'll also talk through direction at length: how to guide a subject with confidence, how to settle someone who is nervous — which is most people, the moment a camera appears — and how small adjustments in posing change the entire emotional temperature of a portrait.

Then you'll shoot. You'll ask your questions while the light is still up and the model is still there, which is the only time those questions really get answered.

How I think about a portrait

My work has always been shaped by the Old Masters — by Caravaggio above all, and by the conviction that light is not there to illuminate a face but to reveal a person. Over twenty-three years I've carried that idea into sittings with actors, heads of state, soldiers, and a great many people who had never once been photographed seriously. The technical vocabulary is the same in every case. What changes is how you use it, and how you make the subject believe, for a few minutes, that the most interesting thing in the world is happening in the space between the two of you.

That is what I most want to pass on — not a formula, but a way of thinking on set. The thing a working portrait photographer is actually doing while everyone else is looking at the gear.

Come and shoot

Bring your camera. Bring questions. You'll leave with portfolio-worthy frames and, I hope, a far clearer sense of how light, angle, and direction conspire to make a portrait worth looking at twice.

The details

Thu Aug 13, 2026 1:00pm - 5:00pm ET

Speakers: Rory Lewis

Event Type: Photography, Lighting

Skill Level: Basic, Intermediate, Advanced

Location: B&H SuperStore - The NEW Event Space

Address: First Floor of B&H NYC SuperStore at 420 9th Avenue, New York NY 10001