Photography & Lighting setups
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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.
One type of product photography that seem to have a growing demand in the photography market is the clean and simple packshot. Usually shot on white background with soft shadows and very even lighting. Easy to use for the clients both in their web shops and printed material.
Even if it seems to be easy to achieve decent looking product photos with a cheap camera and a light tent, many clients of mine have already tried that and wants something a little more professional looking.
My latest assignment in this field was a product shot for a company that sells pills of different kinds, they needed a photo for a magazine ad.
I usually take portraits of ordinary people with ordinary skin and ordinary skills when it comes to make up and all that. Sometimes there is a photo model involved, and sometimes a make-up artist and/or stylist/hairdresser as well, but not very often.
This time I got many of the above mentioned things in one package, the woman who had booked a portrait session turned out to be a make-up artist with her own salon. She knew a bit or two about skin and make-up, especially how to prepare for a photo shoot and reducing the time I have to spend in post processing with retouching to a minute or less. Almost.
The easiest way to get a good portrait lighting that works for a lot of people, I think, is to reduce it to a very simple setup. One light that comes slightly from above and the side. And maybe one light to act as both rim light from behind as well as lighting the background (depending on the type of background of course).
I shoot a lot of portraits for different companies, corporate portraits and ordinary headshots of employees, and sometimes portraits of authors for book publishers. Very often I find myself wanting to create something new, some lighting setup I haven’t used before. And, when trying to recreate that look next time I shoot for the same company, even with my lighting diagrams, it is often more work to get that same shot than it should be.
More examples and studio lighting diagrams after the jump…
Recently I was asked to photograph a lot of garment for Swedish fashion designer and brand Fräulein von Hast, she was planning to start a web shop and needed photos of every skirt, blouse, jacket and dress she had available.
For every item she needed at least three, but more often four different angles so the customers can view the front, back and sides of the skirt or jacket they might be interested in.
This is how I set the light, planned the day and shot 325 photos.
