There is something I like with cinema lighting, or lighting for television, when they tend to have faces painted with just two tones of the same skin colour. This might sound strange when I try to explain it, I blame it on not having English as my first language. What I am trying to say is; I like interesting shadows.
For this portrait, a headshot for an author I did a couple of weeks ago, I tried to balance the key and the fill light so there would be one half of the portrait in a lighter skin tone, and the other in a darker.
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I mostly work alone, but I rent a desk in a house full of nice people doing different stuff. Some are copywriters, some write code, some are art directors and the rest work as project managers and planning production. We all work on different projects for different clients, but share a house, so we really should have portraits in a similar style to present ourselves with.
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Or maybe it was just an excuse for me to try out a different light setup with my brand new Molton fabric and two Profoto D1? I got more or less cooperative models, and they got new profile pictures.
Molton, a 5-foot Octa and a beauty dish…
I usually don’t let my light modifiers be a part of my portraits, sometimes I have to clone out the corner of a reflector panel or crop to get rid of a softbox that was placed very close to the model.
For this portrait of a Swedish authour and illustrator, we tried a lot of different angles, the white Profoto Softlight Reflector (a beauty dish) was first just used as hair light, placed very close to the background, out of frame. When I changed my position a bit, it became a part of the portrait.
Moving around in the studio can give new results…
This will be the last photo from this portrait session I did for a guy wanted to get into the modelling business as a male model. Last I heard from him, he had signed for an agency so I guess the pictures did what they were for. Showing his potential.
First we started with a one-light setup using only a Profoto D1 250 Air and a Magnum reflector, together with a reflector for a little fill.
Adding another light reveals details…
Very often my clients want photos taken in their office, but to make it look a little better, often with a stock photo as some kind of visual reference. Trying to imitate something very polished, sunny and designed, in an ordinary office has its challenges. Especially when the sky outside is covered with dark clouds.
That is exactly what happened to me lately, when shooting portraits for a client. We had just shot the ordinary portraits against a medium grey background in one of their rooms, when they asked if I could take a couple more. If I could use their office as background, they would be delighted.
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