Clean 3-light studio portrait of illustrator

Shooting studio portraits of writers for book publishers are always fun. More often than not, the studio sessions tend to be more of a good discussion around the subject of books and writing than getting them to pose well.

A light pale theme with hard shadows

My idea for this portrait session was to set a light with pretty hard shadows, but also make it a bit pale and washed-out. A bit like the light you have when you stand near a white wall and have the sun directly above you. Hard but not too dark shadows.

The model for today was Johan Unenge, a Swedish illustrator and writer. A very talented guy I have worked with before. He has also been in the studio before, so I had the luxury of knowing beforehand how to set up the lights to make it a good portrait. Mostly when doing corporate portraits, you have to guess or make something that works for many types.

Lighting setup diagram with beautydish

Click here for more studio lighting setups and diagrams

3-light setup for portrait

Mostly in the photo studio, when shooting portraits, I tend to use 3 lights. Sometimes only two, and sometimes even four, but most of the time, three lights is the easiest way to create a setup that works. And some diffusers and reflectors, of course.

Beautydish is not for everyone

Profoto White Softlight Reflector - beautydish

Even if some people say that you can only use the beautydish on young people with flawless skin, I think that it can also make older (than 16) people look really good.

That is, if you like portraits with well defined facial features and if your model is not afraid of letting the wrinkles show. Because they will.

For this portrait I used it without the grid, and without it, it has a spread of light that is quite wide. And having the model so close to the background, a lot of the light from the beautydish also lit the background.

Black, Grey or white background

With the grid on, and no other lights, the background would have been dark grey (or nearly black), but together with the other two lights in the studio, it became light grey. Shooting on a white background is very useful in that way, you can make it go from black to white depending how you place your lights.

Diffusing panels and reflectors

Aside from the three Profoto Compacts I used, there were also three different panels involved. One black flag for stopping the light from the background light to hit the lens (avoiding flare), one white panel to reflect some of the light from the beautydish to lighten the shadows on the model’s left side of the face, and finally, one diffusor in front of the last flash to diffuse the light a bit on the bakground.

Equipment used

This was the first time I tried my new lens, the Nikon 70-200 VRII, in the studio for portraits. It is a fantastic lens, but when pixel-peeping (which I try to avoid as much as I can) it is not as good for portraits as my favorite, the 85mm/1.4.

For lighting, I had my usual three Profoto Compact monoblocs, one with a beautydish, one with a medium size softbox, and one with just the standard reflector.

Feel free to comment if you like it is always appreciated.