Photography YouTube Channel: What Light & Shoot Brought Loris Romano

In 2019, Loris Romano set himself a challenge: publish a short video every week showing how he lit a photo. Two years later, his photography YouTube channel, Light & Shoot, has around a hundred videos and about 10,000 subscribers. It earns him almost nothing directly, but it has changed his place in the photography world.

Talking with Mathieu Vitrat, photographer and podcaster at Fotostudio, he explains why he created the channel, how he keeps up the pace without working all night, what 10,000 subscribers are really worth to brands, and why he doesn't recommend YouTube to every photographer who wants to get noticed.

Who is Loris Romano?

Loris Romano is a professional photographer based in Metz, in the Moselle region of northeastern France, who started his business around 2016. He often signs his work “Romano Loris”, swapping his first and last names because he thinks it sounds better. Before photography came music (he taught guitar) and studies in psychology and sociology.

• Commercial photographer: day to day, he does “whatever he's asked to”, from weddings to corporate communication, all the way to salads for food businesses.
• Studio portraits: his real passion, almost always with artificial light, sometimes outdoors with a flash.
• YouTuber: in 2019 he created Light & Shoot, a channel about lighting where he shows how he makes his photos.
• Trainer: workshops for photo clubs, open days and monthly livestreams for the retailer Digit-Photo, demonstrations at trade shows.

In recent years, he has continued to run studio workshops for Digit-Photo, with live models and gear from different brands. You can follow his work on his channel Light & Shoot and on Instagram, where he posts as romanolorispictures.

1. What matters most in portrait photography: technique or connection?

His channel is mostly about flashes, light modifiers and light placement. Yet Loris is clear: what helps him most day to day isn't technique, it's psychology. He chose to study psychology and sociology at university “to learn how people work, and maybe how I work too”. During a shoot, he tries to read the person in front of him: are they comfortable, are they scared, what do they expect, is there a slightly nervous ego to handle with care? It's an approach close to that of Milena Perdriel, who made psychology the heart of her sessions.

Beautiful photos, and at least one “true” photo

Loris admits that sometimes he “just wants to make something beautiful”, with no hidden message. But at every shoot, with a model or a client, he also wants a photo he calls “true”: the one where the person stops playing a role and lets go, because they trust him. Very often, it all comes down to the eyes.

“It's so beautiful that I feel like I'm not the one who took it.”

Loris Romano

That's his personal definition of a good photo: an image he admires as much as if someone else had made it. Someone who questions himself “nine times a day”, he is much kinder to other people's work than to his own.

2. Why start a YouTube channel as a photographer?

Loris doesn't sugarcoat it: the channel takes him “a crazy amount of time”. At first, the goal was to show his work and gain visibility. But above all, he saw it as the logical next step in his career: becoming a trainer.

The turning point at the Salon de la Photo

At the Salon de la Photo (the big Paris photo show), he worked for the light modifier brand Expo Imaging, with a studio set up right in the aisles to shoot models live. A contact from Profoto, on the next stand, came over to see him: at one point, he almost had a bigger crowd than they did. Loris realized he knew how to pass on what he knows. He even says he is sometimes “a better teacher than practitioner”.

Next came a photo club in his region, which asked him to run workshops (he didn't feel up to it, and his partner at the time pushed him), then Digit-Photo, which booked him for open days with live shooting.

Building an audience before a tour

His idea: one day, do a workshop tour across France. But for that, you need an audience. Two years ago, a workshop in Lyon would have drawn zero people. Today, maybe four. The channel is there to build a community of people who know who he is and like his work, so that a single announcement is enough to fill a room.

“The logical next step for my channel would be in-person workshops.”

Loris Romano

3. How do you post one video a week without working all night?

One video a week, for almost two years, without missing a beat: that's the rule Loris set himself. He kept to it thanks to a format designed around the schedule of a very busy photographer.

• Film his real shoots: he films behind the scenes of all his shoots, back then with an Osmo Pocket.
• Add talking-head shots: all that's left is to explain to camera, which takes him about two hours.
• A short format: he knows how to keep things concise, “it's my greatest strength”, and it's also quicker to produce.
• A stock of footage: he always has shoots filmed in advance and records his talking-head parts when he needs them, often on Monday morning for the following Monday.

A first attempt, abandoned

The channel was born in two stages. A first test went nowhere: he couldn't find his format, and he shelved everything for a year without publishing the videos. He came back wanting to do something high quality straight away. Looking back, he still sees real progress between his first videos (“incredible” color grading, beginner mistakes) and his current ones.

Delegate, yes, but what?

When Mathieu asks him about delegating, Loris keeps the writing and the talking-head parts for himself: with a YouTube channel, “you're selling your personality”. He'd gladly hand over the editing, which doesn't excite him. But first he'll need to get ahead: you can't send your footage to an editor at 2 pm for a video going live at 4 pm. It's the same logic as for all of a photographer's repetitive tasks: you can only delegate well (to a person or to automated workflows) what is already organized.

4. What does a YouTube channel bring a photographer?

Financially, almost nothing directly. Loris calls it “the least profitable channel in the world”: he'd earn more making funny videos on TikTok. But the indirect benefits are many.

• Local work: without leaving home, the channel brings him bookings.
• Monthly livestreams for Digit-Photo: he presents a camera or lighting gear lent to him for two weeks to a month (Canon R5, Sony Alpha 7S III, lights).
• Sponsored campaigns: Profoto, for example, commissioned two videos from him, one on a modifier adapter ring and one on a flash.
• Workshops for clubs and stores.
• Credibility: around a hundred free videos, followed by knowledgeable subscribers who call him out on the slightest shortcut.

10,000 subscribers, but qualified subscribers

In a double niche (photography, then studio lighting), Loris knows he'll never compete with gaming channels. Most of his audience is between 25 and 35, with no minors: active, passionate people. A brand manager confirmed it when he only had 3,000 or 4,000 subscribers: they're there because they went looking for him.

“I'd rather have one subscriber who's there because they want to be, than my mom subscribing and never watching my videos.”

Loris Romano

So he never asks his Facebook friends or Instagram followers to subscribe. He did, however, launch the hashtag #lightandshoot so his community could share the photos they made after a tutorial. An unexpected effect: subscribers surprised that he replies to them, another who posts a story saying he liked their photo. “I don't have that kind of reach yet”, he admits.

5. How do you work with brands without losing credibility?

Offers come in, and Loris is wary of them. He doesn't want his channel to turn into “a home shopping channel” where he'd rave about the latest lens one week, then another one the next. As Mathieu points out, part of the audience now assumes an influencer is there to sell them something.

His three rules

• Only present what he uses, what he wants to use or what he likes. Everything else, he turns down.
• Work the product into a regular tutorial, rather than making an advertising video.
• Show reproducible setups: a flash placed in the same spot, with a similar modifier, will give a similar result. The difference lies in the features (HSS, fast recycling), and he says so.

He applies the same logic to his livestreams for the retailer: he doesn't choose the products, but he isn't there to sell them. He's there to show how they work.

“I don't want it to turn into a home shopping channel.”

Loris Romano

6. How do you find the right video format?

Loris couldn't find what he was looking for on French YouTube: videos that explain how a photo was made. Too often, he'd see a gorgeous thumbnail and come away with no idea how to recreate it. He wanted to know where the flash was.

Show what goes on behind the scenes, with no final secret

His inspiration comes mostly from English-language channels: Karl Taylor, “the quiet strength of photography”, who shows in a huge studio where he places his flashes and why, or AdoramaTV. Loris scaled that principle down to his own level and his short format. His promise: show everything behind the scenes without keeping a secret that would stop you from recreating the photo, and without selling a product at the end that would make you believe it's all thanks to that product.

What fascinates him about the studio is control: without a flash, the photo is black. You make the same moves for a badly lit photo as for a well lit one: grab the light, place it, press the shutter. “It's no more of a pain to take a good photo.”

“I had to learn to explain what I do on autopilot so it would become easy for people.”

Loris Romano

The thumbnail is the final photo

Mathieu points out a bold choice: on every video, the thumbnail is the final result. If you like the photo, you click. That's also what limits the format, because many photos share similar setups. So Loris is already looking for new ideas, as much to avoid boring his audience as to avoid getting bored himself.

Three livestream formats in the works

An improvised livestream from home, during the pandemic, showed him he could broadcast in high quality from his studio. He's preparing three formats:

• A live shoot, with no tutorial: he opens the door to his studio and answers the chat.
• Editing sessions, to answer the many questions about how he processes his images in Lightroom (and his presets calibrated for his studio).
• A show with a guest who doesn't share his vision or does something different from him. First idea: a model explaining why she doesn't reply to some photographers, and what seems fishy to her when someone gets in touch.

7. Should you start a YouTube channel to grow your business?

Loris's answer is surprising: no, not necessarily. For him, people go to YouTube to learn, to be entertained or to listen to music. A photographer who just wants to show their photos, without explaining anything, won't find an audience there. To present your portfolio, a photography website is still the right showcase.

Find your channel and your tone

Long before YouTube, Loris already loved marketing, with one main lever: humor. For Valentine's Day, when everyone was giving away couples' photo sessions, he ran a contest featuring two of his friends in fits of laughter, with this message: “no boyfriend? Come with your best friend”. The result: around 16,000 shares, and even an entry from Québec. A contest like this is also a chance to collect contact details, as long as you bring them into a contact form and then stay in touch with a newsletter.

But that humor is very him: at 35, he has “the face of a young joker”. What works for one person won't necessarily work for another. The real trap is trying to please everyone.

“I think the biggest mistake is trying to make smooth, one-size-fits-all content.”

Loris Romano

At first, take the jobs you know how to do

Mathieu stresses the value of attracting clients you enjoy working with, not just their budget. Loris adds a nuance: when you're starting a business, you shouldn't turn your nose up at income, as long as you take jobs you're capable of doing. Real freedom comes later, when the bookings match what you love. To know which jobs are worth it from the start, you still need to know your minimum price: the photography price calculator helps you set it.

“It's only photography”

To wrap up, Loris quotes his friend Antonio Gaudencio, an urban landscape photographer known for his views of New York: “whether you're a pro or an amateur, don't forget it's only photography”. As soon as you work for people, you have to be serious, but photography should stay a pleasure. That's why Loris would stop his videos if he got tired of them. His advice: stay curious, experiment, learn, and use your camera to meet people.

Episode recorded in spring 2021, still in the middle of the pandemic. The figures (10,000 subscribers, around a hundred videos) and the projects mentioned refer to that period.

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