I've been trying to get better at taking photos of people lately, and with the help of my girlfriend and her friend I put together a very casual photoshoot in the living room of our 600sqft apartment. I hope to take my lighting setup outside soon for some more interesting backgrounds and themes, but for now I'm just working on getting a sense for lighting, posing, and post production. I know these are both very boring photos (no hair/makeup/fancy outfits) but please let me know what you think of the technical aspects.
Hi Jesse, thanks for sharing.
I have to say you're on the right track, not bad for first time portraits. What intrigues me is the fact that the backgrounds are perfectly lit with just one light. My guess is that you exposed for the background and used a light for fill but your fill was a tad too strong especiaaly on the first one.
The way is see the catchlight on the first one, light on camera right, is normally more suited for males subjects but works for this one other than beeing too strong. Her pose is nice, she seems natural and I like the crop. It would be a 3 if it wasn't for the fill beeing too strong.
On the second one you have a fill that is more appropriate for a female subject , would probably be a bit better if the light was slightly to camera left to give a catchlight at 10h00 to mimick the sun but on this one she has a pose I'll say more for a male subject and she doesn't seem as natural in front of the camera.
Also it lokks like you took this shot from bellow wich makes the subject look in a position of authority rather than a relaxed portrait. For portraits try to shoot slightly from above like the first one, it gives the impresdion the subject is more accessable, more open and more vulnerable.
If you took a portrait of a boxer or other strong personalities, yes from below it works good.
Hope this helps,
Marc
Thanks Marc, great input! I will definitely remember your advice for my next shoot. Definitely I have to work a lot on posing and choice of lighting depending on the subject. I didn't even consider the impact you mention of changing the angle of the camera changing the feeling of the shot.
The backgrounds weren't perfectly lit, I just adjusted them in post. But being in such a small space with such a big light (47" octobox) it was very difficult to control what happened to the background.
I wonder what do you mean when you say fill light? The only light was the speedlite in octobox directly in front of the model and feathered by facing it away from the background and towards the camera. I wanted a more dynamic looking light on their faces, but being in such a tiny "studio" I was limited in my choices of where to place the light and subjects.
Thanks again!
A fill light is a light used to remove the shadows mostly. In your case from what I can see you used the ambient light as the main light and used your speedlight as a fill.
Btw, the bigger your light source appears from the subject, the softer it will be. This is what you want for portraits in general so don't be afraid to put your octogone really close, barely out of the frame and almost touching your subject. It's also better for the recycling time of your speedlight since you can turn the power very low.
There was no ambient light (black photo when the speedlite was turned off), and the octobox was just out of the frame. I had it angled away from the subject so just the edge of the light was illuminating the subject (I believe this is called feathering).