Photography & Lighting setups
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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 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.
This business portrait is a simple development of the one light Magnum portrait (click link for behind the scenes photos and more) I shot earlier the same day as a test. It uses the same key/main light as before, a Profoto D1 250 Air with a gridded Profoto Magnum reflector from above through a large Chimera panel with diffusion fabric.
I just added another D1 in a medium sized softbox (2×3 feet or 60×90 cm) placed near the background half way behind the bookend so the effective size of the light is more of a strip softbox.
Before helping some executives with business portraits in my studio the other day, I had the chance to experiment with a one light setup using only a Profoto Magnum reflector shot through a Chimera panel with diffusion fabric.
Luckily, Fripp, a guy I share office with, walked by and I didn’t have to use myself as a test dummy setting the lights right. It makes all the difference to have someone other that yourself to test different setups on (after a while, all the boring test shots I have of myself looks almost the same and it is hard to create something new).
This is a portrait style I think works very well for corporate and business portraits of all types. On location or in the studio, with a clean background or with something out of focus.
It works especially well if you need to have a lot of portraits in a layout, for example showing the board of directors or management, as every face has the same type of shadows on one side.
What you need is three lights, a diffusion panel and a camera.
