Behind the Scenes: How I Photographed a Motivational Speaker on Stage Without Having Access to a Stage

Editorial assignments can be both boring and quite interesting. Most of the time that depends on the photographer's attitude, not the budget. Let me show you how I approached a project where I had to make portraits of a motivational speaker and influencer.

The Assignment

I had an assignment for a local #KeepAsking campaign sponsored by Acer. There was an interview with an innovation consultant and motivational speaker from Bulgaria. They needed portraits for the article. I was allowed to have about 20 minutes before his interview with the journalist. They've given me full freedom (thanks for that!) in terms of ideas. The only limitation was the time, the space, and the budget. As I said, I had less than half and hour. We met in a local cafe that was full of people. The budget was good enough for an editorial assignment like that, but not for photographing him on a real stage.

The Day Before

I did my research and I had several ideas for portraits. I always try to have a "safe" portrait and a few deviations from the "safe" spot. I avoid thinking about ideas only on the day of the assignment. I also don't entirely stick to certain ideas if the situation calls for a plan B. In this case the deviation from the comfort zone was a portrait of him on a stage. I was going to be in a small cafe probably full of people (and it was). I planned the gear I'd need. I wanted to make a photograph with as little as possible ambient light and the man lit by strobes as if he was on a stage.

On Set

It was cold and was raining outside, about 1 p.m., and the cafe was warm and cozy. There were lots of people inside and fortunately we found two adjacent tables that weren't taken. The journalist was worried I was going to put crazy big softboxes (having worked with me before). I planned to use three lights and diminish all the available light to a minimum without blinding the people in the cafe with my strobes. For this reason I had to shoot as few frames as possible and be as quick as possible.

Camera Settings

When working with strobes I always take a reading of the ambient light and sometimes I make a test shot. I was on location and used battery-powered lights so I had power limitations. Also I wanted to be as low profile as possible (although I had a permission to shoot there). In order to kill the available light I had to shoot with camera settings that included low ISO, high shutter speed, and higher f-stop number. All these guaranteed less light into the sensor. I used ISO 100, shutter speed of 1/250 sec, and an aperture of f/13. Considering there were people in the room I shot against the street view so nobody was worried I'm photographing them. I took a test picture and I got the following:

It looked almost dark with these settings on an early afternoon. Then I moved to the lighting.

Lights Setup

I used hard lights because stage lighting is hard lights most of the time. Usually there is one front and one back light. I decided to go with two front lights so I get some of them in the frame producing (hopefully) cool light flares. This was my lights setup:

Light A has a zero. This means it was measured at f/13 with a light meter, the same as the f-stop of my ambient test shot. Light B was one stop more powerful. That's why I mark it with a "+1". It was measured at f/18. Light C was f/18 too. I moved the lights close enough to the subject for three reasons:

1. f/18 means I had to put a lot of power to the strobes and this would not be very pleasant to the people around.
2. There were lots of people and could not physically put the light stands further away.
3. I wanted a quick fall-off of the light power so my environment is as dark as possible.

Here's what the lights looked like from aside:

The Shoot

I explained my idea while I was setting up the lights. When the setup was ready, I didn't take any test shots but relied on the light meter readings. I took eight shots fine tuning the pose of my subject with every click. His expressions were great in front of camera as he was used to be in such situations. The result was the following:

Not what I expected, right? The reason the environment is not as dark as in the ambient light test above was the lack of strobes. Although the strobes were close enough to him I could not make the space darker than that. The walls were white and light was bouncing everywhere and I could not control that unless I used grids. I didn't have any with me. It would have been easier if we were further away from the windows but this was the only space we could use. The verdict?

I Will Fix It In Post

Sometimes that's an option not because you're lazy, but because there's nothing else you could do. I must confess I don't like cutting objects out. I like to blend things when making composites. In this case I just wanted to make the dark environment darker.

First I grabbed a normal brush and smeared the environment so that there were not many details left. I used a more precise selection around the sleeves and the back of the shirt. Other than that I did it quite sloppy as it didn't need to be exact.

Then I used the Quick Selection tool to make a selection around the subject. I used two Curves layer with that selection to darken the environment. Why two? I just duplicated one of them to make things darker.

Then with a round soft brush on two new layers I put a hotspot on each one where the lights were. I made the kicker light have a blue tint while making the front lights warmer in color. I enhanced the existing lens flare from the original shot with a Lens Flare effect (from the Filters menu). Then after playing a little with contrast, this was the result:

Conclusion

I try to work on projects that give me opportunities to produce images that are different from what I've done before. It's the portfolio the future clients see, not my bank account. That's why when working it is important to work on interesting ideas regardless of the budget. Nobody cares if this was a commissioned image or a personal project. It is your marketing tool for the future.