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Outdoor Portrait With Two Umbrellas

Always having extra lighting modifiers, for example an umbrella, can be a really smart thing sometimes. Especially when you are hired to shoot portraits on a location where the best backgrounds are outside and it rains that day.

Lucky for me, it was a nice day temperature-wise, so my model, a Swedish author, didn´t mind standing in the rain. But having an extra umbrella saved his jacket from getting wet with dark dots everywhere and his hair from getting all flat.

But the Profoto Deep Umbrella he held in these portraits also helped me getting much more interesting light and shadows.

Behind The Scenes in the Rain

Now, this is just a BTS-photo but also a quick test shot I did to check the light and exposure. With my Profoto B2 camera right and a Medium Deep Umbrella plus front diffuser, the light source was very large at that distance.

Umbrella and Flag in one

Just to see the difference, I asked him to tilt the umbrella he was holding. In the first test photo, it was a bit too high up and also tilted back very much.

Holding it more straight and lower was part making it look better but also to flag some of the light from the lighting umbrella. Suddenly I got the shadows and contrast I wanted.

The Headshot with umbrella

Just to cover all the bases, I did some close-up headshots as well. This tight, the shoulders doesn´t look as he is holding something. But zooming out just a little bit, the can seem a bit strange.

Thanks to the extra umbrella, I got a lot better outdoor portraits here than I thought I could. Working quick on-location, I don´t really want to spend too much time on flags and extra stands, but this gave me (or maybe him) protection from the rain and a better light.

The next thing would maybe be for Profoto to design a good handle for their umbrellas so you could use them as rain cover?

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Girish May 14, 2018, 20:18

    Hi Stefan .. just went through some posts. Thanks a ton for the bts on many and the reviews. Lot of help here 🙂

    • Stefan Tell May 16, 2018, 00:20

      Thanks,
      glad you found my blog.

      Please let me know if you have any questions about anything here.