DSLR Photography Forum

Exif for all pictures: ISO 100; f5.6; 1/30sec; 70mm.

Lighting: 2 flash guns at 10 and 1 o'clock with diffuser panels. Backlight from a 100-watt spotlight.

The only post production done was an increase in contrast. I'm very happy with results, considering i'm new to portraiture.








I'm also going to crossover into photoshop playground and ask for post production suggestions.

Enjoy!

In hindsight, I probably should have used a different backdrop. I don't think there's enough contrast between it and the skin.

Hello Rabid ,

You might want to try to move your subjects further away from the back drop . You will get more " blur " in it and the wrinkles and what not wont be as noticable . Also another thing that i am seeing is they are leaning to the left ? maybe it was your intention ? Or mabye the way they are all sitting ?
One more thing ( sorry ) i am seeing a yellow tint , could be my monitor , or your WB ?
Keep shooting portraits , they can be a lot of fun ! i love playing with the different lighting techs , but Paul will have to help more with that .

All in all i think they are a great start !!! ........ Shawn

Hey Shawn,

Thanks for the advice. I can't really have the subjects further away from the backdrop without knocking out a wall, unfortunately. the lean is due to camera tilt, which was intentional, because i just thought it made it look not quite as boring as straight up and down. With the yellow tint, do you mean in the skintones or just the background? I know there's a yellow tint in the background, because I used a tungsten spotlight to light it, and had WB set to Flash.

It's rather annoying trying to do portraits with uncooperative subjects in cramped spaces when the only lighting equipment you have is two flashes! *Goes to Sweden and makes off with Paul's set up.... (i'm sure he won't notice...)*

Hey Patrick (is that your sure name ?) or did i get it backwards ?

Id say you did very well regarding this is your first go at it. In fact i say you did splendid with the limited space and gear.

A few suggestion to fix some stuff.

Whitebalance
If you could get a hold of greycard that is actually grey, make a wb preset off that in the same light as you subject and you will get rid of the colorcast

Background
I know about cramped spaces lol, but i would try a darker bg fabric, and i would try to feather the bare flash over it, or simply center it to make a sepparation between the background and your subject.

Lightning position
As for the lightning i would try to use one flash to illuminate the background, and one to use a keylight camera left/right.
For fill use a foamcoresheet.

This will give you more depth in the image.


As i said before, the results are very nice given the gear and experience.

When i look back to my photos when i started out with just my sb800's i notice my lightning is kind of flat, i thought i needed to put light everywhere.

But the secret is to control to shadows where they fall and their intensity (yes in other words control the light spread)

Iv also learned that lightning position is crucial not only for product shots, but it makes a great deal for portraits aswell.


So i would suggest the same subjects. darker background, move one of the speedlights to the background, and dont use the 100w spotlight.
Get a foamcore sheet for fill, to open up the shadows on the oppsite side of the key light.

Dont forget that you can go along way with just one speedlight and a foamcoresheet. Less is often more when it comes to light, especially of you dont have the means to control/modify it.


Hope some of it will be useful.

/Paul L.

Thanks for the help, Paul. (Patrick is my surname, btw, first name is Cameron. Cam will do fine though).

DOh!!
Sorry man, its way to early, i firstname offcourse lol

Cam it is.

/Paul L.

Hey Cam,

well done they look to me!
I agree with Paul on the color of the background, you figured that out yourself anyway.
a neutral grey or black will be much more flattering for the skin than the reddish appearing (tungsten?) spotlight on the background.
As for lighting I am not an expert.....
For portraits, I find it often turns out a 8x10 format is much more flattering that the longish 8x12 your camera produces. With this in mind you can compose your portraits accordingly. The once you showed us can all be cropped to 8x10, and personally I think it would look good. If you don' t have a specific purpose you are shooting for, you are free to experiment with all kinds of crops.

Have fun practising!!


(a very rough lasso selection, you can do much better....)

That really does improve it. I'm not sure i can be bothered going to that much effort. I'll just keep practicing; it's an excuse to take more photos! (as if i need one)

I agree, it's always better to take a good picture from the beginning than having to fix it in photoshop. not saying yours weren't good to begin with.
But white balance is one of the easier things to fix and often comes out wrong especially when using two or more different light sources. So you might as well develop a protocol to adjust that in Photoshop

Good to see you're having fun!

uli