Portraits over 3 years
neil posted in Photos, Neil, phototech, 5Dmk2 on July 31st, 2010
I have been shooting headshots of Edinburgh University Sports Union’s committee for three years now. Often I’m shooting the same people in different committee positions. Meanwhile my lighting has been evolving. I have more kit available and considerably more know-how. Here is a comparison of my shoots over the three years:
Year 1: Unfamiliar rental kit and a wierd location. I pulled over a golden divider wall to make a cleanish background and put two light lights in the ’safe’ 45/45 configuration.
Year 2: Arranged a speedlight to flood a neutral coloured wall. Large silver brolly camera high right, softbox for fill. Using lots of large modifiers in a right space (to get the background) was a bit intimidating for some of my subjects.
Year 3: Weather was good so used a wall outside. Lit the background with a gridded flash aimed to rake across the stonework. Two lights to rimlight and a rotabox stood off a few meters as the mainlight.
I’m happiest with the single left photo from year 2, however the setup had a flaw in that it created a “dark eye” on the right that was underlit by the high mainlight and was’nt filled properly by the softbox. The lighting had to work on ten people of different ages, sexes and builds. The year 1 photos hit a problem with cases of “rugby player brow” due to the all the lighting being set high and aimed down. The year 2 low softbox was specifically tailored to deal with this, but did’nt always get both eyes. By year 3 I just dropped my mainlight to head height and made sure if was sufficiently backed off not to vary in exposure dramatically across the face or be a distraction when shooting. It could have been closer to the middle for more even exposure, but I was fine with how it fell. A subtle gradient in lightroom could even things up if it looked like a problem. I concentrated on giving my light a bit more depth, making sure there were shadows and a decent hair/side/backlight that I varied from person to person.
The examples I am happiest are generally the women. I hypothesise this is because a generic light looks better on ladies and OK on blokes, wheras a special “bloke” shooting light would make the men look great would’nt work on the ladies. There are a number of other factors that may explain it, but thats my first thought. As a compromise in the 3rd year I walked the rimlights around to form a side light when shooting the men, this was a change I could make while chatting to the subject and getting them in the right spot for all the other lights. Over all three years I used a marker on the floor so I could guide people easily into the right place.
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