Ring flash author portrait

Last year, I posted a test shot from this photo session with a Swedish author, and now I can show the real portrait. Her book is out, so there is no restrictions anymore.

This is from the studio were we tried a couple of different setups, one of them with a green background and ring flash. My main light was a beauty dish, but the ring flash did its part too by adding fill from the camera angle, on-axis as they say.

The main light is camera left, a Profoto D1 250 Air with a Profoto White Softlight Reflector. Fill is the ring flash and a Widesoft reflector, the gradient on the background is from a third light placed close to the background. And I think there must be a hairlight involved even if I can´t see it on this behind the scenes pic, probably on a boom.

This last photo is from the test shot with a friend, here the fill light from the ring flash is more visible on his skin, I think. It reveals details in a really nice way but is quite hard to work with. When I stood in front of the camera for the first test shots, I felt the light coming straight into my eyes wasn’t all that comfortable.

I will try adding a layer of ND-filter later for the ring flash, otherwise I have to use smaller aperture and being restricted to f/8 and above isn’t really my style, as well as having the model go blind during the session.