Hi!
Just did a job including corporate headshots. Would love to get feeback on these.
I used a 43" umbrella as key and 24" softbox as kicker with YN560III speedlights. A Sony A7 with Minolta AF 85mm f1.4 at f3,5.
It's my first on location job but by all means don't go easy :)
Three very well executed shots, and no issues from the glasses, so very well done. I do think the woman should have been looking into your lens, like the men are. I also think a bit of "airbrushing" for the woman might have been better, not much though, the trick is always to do the bare minimum you think is aceptable, then reduce it a bit, imo. There seems to be a coolness to the colours. The bottom two are blue and in the case of the top one maybe a touch of green or cyan, but it is very close. I wonder if using a colour checker or similar might be well advised, with such set-up and critical shots. I bought one recently but so far have not tried it. However I have seen them used and they are good.
A classic technique is to have a 1/4 or 1/2 daylight gel on the backlight so the side of the face is cool with the key light un geled so correct colour is on the front of the face. This give a lovely 3D feel and makes the face seem more tanned, a bit, which can be very attractive, too of course.
Thanks for your reply Ian! I agree that they are a bit cool, I made them a bit warmer. I will look into this color checker, seems like a good thing to have. I don't even use a light meter.
Could you explain what you mean with the gels? 1/2 daylight, doesn't that mean an orange gel?
Anyway what you meant is to have the kicker light in a cooler tone right?
I wanted to have the background a lot cooler than it is now, what could I have done here? Should I have used daylight gels on the flashes to make the subject a lot warmer than the background?
Now when I made the subjects warmer the bacground is too yellow for me.
They do look more flattering for the warmth, so that seems like a good edit.
Yes I mean to use a blue kicker. I did not use the word cooler, because that can be taken either way. Technically a blue light is hot and an orange is cooler. I know you did not mean it that way and the reason this is the correct way but not the normal way to describe colours is because colour temperature is a measured colour of light produced by a "black body" when it is heated, so when it gets to 2800 degrees Kelvin it glows emitting a light the same colour we are used to seeing from a traditional tungsten light buld or a tungsten halogen glows at 3200 degrees. If we then increase the temperature to 5600 degrees it produces light which is blueer, like noon sunshine-daylight. And if we were to further increase the black body's temperature to 8000 degrees or much higher then it would glow like the colour of daylight from a blue sky without sun (ie the light in shade from a blue sky at differnt times of the year). So hotter is more blue and cooler is more orange. Of course, if we want to make our cameras produce pictures with more warmth (orangeness) we can dial in a higher temperature to tell the camera we are using a more blue light and it will add orange to compensate. So in a daylight situation rather than shoot at 5600 degrees kelvin increasing the temp to 6000 or more will "warm up" the picture.
A 1/2 or 1/4 daylight is a blue lighting gel but not just any blue. It is specifically designed to colour correct tungsten light to look like daylight or at least 1/1 daylight is. The 1/2 and 1/4 are the same but not so intens, so they partly change the colour in the exact same direction.
If you want to light the shot so the background is cooler, I suggest either; lighting the bg with your flash with one of the above blue gels on it, or a much more simple and likely more effective solution would be to add a 1/4 or 1/2 or even a 1/1 tungsten (orange gel) to your key light and setting your camera to a colour temperature to match, say some where between 2800 and 3200 degrees kelvin for a 1/1 tungsten gel. Playing around with the camera's white balance (colour temperature) will allow you to fine tune the exact colour but if you use the colour checker there will be no point in playing with the colour cheker as your adjustments will be corrected out bythe colour checker in the edit. So for most control use the colour checker then edit the colour for artistic efffects as a last stage of editing, after the colour checker has been used on your computer to perfect the colour. Do not use the auto white balance, as this will change the colour everytime you shoot. Just as with any auto functionality, it will do what it wants depending on all sorts of subject and lighting variables.
Flash meter; you seem to be able to get your exposures correct without but a flash meter is always going to help with speed, accuracy and consistency, if you get familiar with it and the dynamic range of your camra, cameras' dynamic ranges do vary.
I hpe that all helps.
Hugo, for a first time I think you've done a great job. Your light is great - very consistent across the shots (always desirable for corporate shots).
Nice connection with the guys, however your lady seems to be looking somewhere other than into your lens.
Good stuff!
Thank you Bruce for your comment! I'm not sure what's up with the lady. I think she is looking into the lens but maybe she has some slight issue with her eyes? Her right eye seem to be looking somewhere else..
I really want to whiten their teeth and fix the red skin blotches. Love the separation of the background! 1.4 :D. And also too much light on the chests, distracting from the face.