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Articles Tagged with: natural light

Visualizing Rebecca

Rebecca is the latest friend to come to the home studio for a portrait session, and man is she amazing to photograph. It’s becoming quickly apparent that it’s impossible to get bored with portraiture when you have amazing people to work with who are creative and are game for anything. This time around, I had several shots pre-visualized before we began. The first one is this natural light portrait using windows as the light source. We took advantage of the fading afternoon light and went for a bedroom scene (in my dining room).

I put a bed sheet on an ottoman to act as a bed. The problem was that I forgot how tall Rebecca is, and any shot that showed her whole body on the ottoman looked quite strange. It made her look like she was in a toddler’s bed, which is less than sexy when you think about it. No problem, I just shot tighter on her and got an implied photo. Sexy’s back!

Next, I wanted to showcase her amazing long auburn hair. We broke out the industrial fan and had her whipping her head from front to back to get her hair to catch the wind like a sail.

My goal was to have her flip her head enough times until she passed out. Not really, but I’m sure it felt like that to her. This kind of shot is all about timing. Hit the shutter at the perfect time while the hair is spread out and her face doesn’t look like someone who’s moving up and down vigorously. That’s not an easy shot to get without a lot of attempts. Saying that she’s a trooper is an understatement.

This is my final pre-visualized shot. I wanted to get this angle showing the piano and guitar on one side of the wall and Rebecca on the other side. This is one shot – not a diptych. I was inspired to use some of my old records in it after a friend of mine from back in my punk rock musician days posted vintage photos of girls with records on his Facebook page. Thanks for the inspiration Frank!

Katie, who works with Rebecca and is also just plain awesome, was helping out with the shoot and got drafted into a similar shot. I’m blessed to know such beautiful people! This shot rocks almost as hard as Katie at an Avett Brothers show at the North Charleston Coliseum (I’m still indebted because she invited me into the box seats with her friends at that show).

The above shot was a suggestion of Rebecca’s, which was to shoot her on a magenta background to compliment a green dress she wanted to wear. With such big bright blue eyes and the rich colors of her dress, her hair, and the background (I used a speedlight with a magenta gel on it to get that), I wanted to get a big smiling portrait. Rebecca’s such a fun girl that it’s more than easy to get a natural reaction out of her.

This was the final frame of the shoot. I love to do a head shot like this at the end of a shoot because at that point the person has been coached so much that they just easily connect with the camera. They’re all warmed up and comfortable, and it’s also quite a slow-down from the rest of the shoot. I just use the modeling lights and a 50mm lens, and really tone it down. I can fire off multiple shots while talking and complimenting the subject on the work we just did, and it really makes for a beautiful expression.

As I do this more, I’m really seeing the importance of vision over technical ability. You need the technical ability for sure, but without the vision, making a good photo becomes a game of luck. Why take only chances? The photo at the top of this post is an example of free-styling it. It might be one of my favorite shots that I’ve made in a long time, but it really was a lucky shot that I got while we were working out some fashion poses. Her expression is amazing and it was a decisive moment that was lost in the very next frame of the same setup. The blowing hair shot though, which was heavily planned and worked on, was destined to succeed because I knew exactly what I wanted it to look like before I took the shot. Sure, luck is a great thing, but it’s not predictable. Hard work and visualization can be.

Up All Night

My kids tried to wait up for my wife Amy last night. Kegan didn’t quite make it past the floor. Luckily, Lola was there to keep him company. I still had my camera setup from this post, so I cranked up the ISO to 1600 and got down on the floor to shoot this. I did play with the colors and saturation a bit to get that desaturated look.

In unrelated news, I got the email today that every person in their mid-thirties who attended college waits many years to receive. My student loans are all officially paid off. I think I need a drink! It’s a happy Sunday indeed.

Natural Light Portrait

Here’s one of my clients who today became an unknowing portrait subject of mine. I received a really cool book for Christmas by Chris Orwig called “People Pictures: 30 Exercises for Creating Authentic Photographs“. The title of the book really spoke to me, and the cover of it screamed “BUY ME!” so I had to add it to the wish list 😉

I just started reading it this morning, and I was happy to see that the forward was written by one of my favorite photo authors David duChemin, who’s latest book, “Photographically Speaking: A Deeper Look at Creating Stronger Images” I’ve also received for Christmas and have been reading.

So the first exercise is to take a very quick portrait with minimal equipment. I was working with Bobby at his office replacing some computer equipment when I saw that the clouds had covered the sun at one point enough to get an environmental portrait outside in front of his doorway. This was the initial shot I made:

I framed him just outside of the entranceway to his office with his sign hanging overhead so that it looks almost like it was put there in post. He’s in the light and the background is in the shadow. The short-lived cloud acted as my light diffuser and I chose the slight angle to keep all of those elements together while avoiding as much of the reflections in the windows as possible. I positioned Bobby dead center to balance the sign in the shot. The shadows of the entranceway formed a natural vignette, although I did add a little more vignetting in post even it out on the bottom half of the frame. I shot this with a 35mm prime lens at f/1.8 & ISO 200. I was in Aperture Priority with a +1/3 EV and it chose 1/1250 of a second for the shutter speed. I shot a few frames to nail the composition and a few more to adjust the exposure, and got my shot within a minute. It was that easy, and that was the point – don’t worry about lenses, lights, or filters. Just grab the camera and take a simple portrait of a person without forcing it.

The problem is that once I get the bug, it’s hard to squish it. Inside, I shot a few more shots, including the one at the top of this post which I really ended up liking. He’s sitting between two windows, which made for really cool rim lights. I shot it in manual mode at f/1.8, 1/40th of a second, and ISO 200. I got in close to throw everything past his eyes into a slight blur. I also removed a few blemishes and smoothed the skin slightly in Photoshop (a backlit natural light portrait can be a little unforgiving on anyone over the age of 25) and that’s it. The book is really not about flattery though, it’s about connecting with people, which I believe was a successful attempt here.

There’s also a Flickr group based around the exorcises in the book, and so far there are some really talented photographers participating.