Photography & Lighting setups
From the category archives:
Recently I took some portraits for a guy wanting to try his luck as a male model, click here for the result from the outdoor portrait session on a cloudy day.
Before that we started in the studio with a very simple lighting setup. Just one Profoto D1 250 Air and a gridded Magnum reflector, and a bookend. On white background. No retouching, just him.
This is a portrait I did for a Swedish publishing house of a famous singer in my studio, using only one Profoto D1 250 Air and a Profoto Magnum reflector. And a silver reflector below her face to throw some light back up into the shadows and to add a little more sparkle in her eyes.
This is in my opinion the easiest way of doing a studio portrait with only one light, add a reflector below if you feel that a little reflected fill light might improve it. Silver if you want more fill and contrast, white if you just want diffused light.
You can use it in the studio or on location, the only thing you need is a studio light (or speedlight), a softbox and a boom stand. Adjust the light on the model and/or background by moving the light/model if you want different looking photos. In this case, I shot against a white paper background which turned out light grey.
I haven’t used the snoot for portraits in a while, and when a publisher in Stockholm asked me to take some portraits of a writer, I thought it could be a good idea to include it. To create something a little different.
Using the snoot all by itself would maybe have been cool, but not that useful. Maybe if she wrote vintage mystery novels. So, I used it together with a much larger light source from the same direction, a 5 foot Profoto softbox Octa. As something between fill and key light.
This is a business portrait from the final session the day I used almost the same lighting setup for three different clients with just the addition of one more light for every new “model”.
It started with the one light setup with a test model (a friend with a skate board), which resulted in these portraits of a Swedish singer.
Later the same day, I shot some business portraits using two lights, and last, the portrait above with a third light used as fill light. Just a little, to make the texture in his face become more visible, and the shadows more open.
