Improving indoor portraits with just one light and a wall

Some of my assignments are for magazines and newsletters, and they mostly consists of  “go there and there, take a portrait of him and her, and send us the picture soon”. In this case it was two people working at a animals hospital together with their latest addition, a X-ray computed tomography machine.

Hearing that I would take photos inside a hospital made me think twice about going there with just my D700 and a Speedlight (which I mostly do otherwise) together with some lenses.

Instead I also packed a light stand, my Profoto AcuteB 600R, a PocketWizard, some ND-filter and duct tape.

Improving ambient light in a room

When I saw the small x-ray room the machine was in, I tried a couple of angles that would fit both the persons that needed to be in the pictures, as well as the pretty large piece of machinery.

The hospitals I have been to have almost all looked the same, some dull paint on the walls and flourescent lighting. Which makes for pretty bad portraits.

The simplest way to get good light, as I saw it, was to use the wall behind where I would be standing with the camera as a reflector, and turn the wall into one big fill light with a Profoto AcuteB 600R pointed straight into the wall.

To get the effect down really low, I taped ND-filter over the disc reflector.

This was my first test exposure, aperture 4 and shutter speed 1/200s. A bit too dark shadows and little too dark generally.

I increased the impact from the available light by adjusting the shutter in steps until I reached 1/100s which seemed like a good combination of flash fill and flourescent ambient light.

Aperture 4 seemed like a good choice as I wanted both persons to be sharp, but the background a little little soft.

And the shutter minimized the risks of getting blurry shots, something that is expremely annoying if you might catch it one the otherwise best shot.

Above is the room with just the available light (flash turned off for comparison) from the flourescent lamps, and it shows how much/little of is involved in the final image.

One of the nurses working there was really helpful and did gladly stand there while I adjusted the final angles and exposures.

It was thanks to her that I could add the final touch to the setup, the examination lamp on the arm above the machine could be turned on, and that helped with a little rim light on the machine as well as a tiny hair light if you look really close.

Nothing special, but much better than nothing at least. After that, I got a couple of minutes with the people I was there to photograph, and then I packed my stuff and headed back to the office where I made some small adjustments in Lightroom and delivered the portraits to my client. From door to door and back, I think it took about one hour.

From now on, I think I always will bring at least one big light and a light stand to every assignment. They are heavy but portable, and can make a big difference when coming to environments that generally make you think of boring photos. Or hours in Photoshop.

All photos were taken with a Nikon D700 and the 24-70/2.8 @29mm.