When I’m shooting portraits, I like to keep my lighting setup simple. It’s not that I don’t like fancy lighting setups with modifiers and gels and all that jazz. I’m just too lazy to set everything up. Also, I don’t own a lot of lighting gear, so I try to make do with what I have.
This portrait of Margaret that I shot the other night is a good example of keeping things simple. All I used here was two speedlights. The main light is a Nikon SB-600 at 1/4 power in a shoot-through umbrella just above head level and to camera left. I also had a bare Nikon SB-600 at 1/2 power directly behind her blasting at the wall. I set the zoom on the backlight to 14mm so that I could get pretty wide coverage. Exposure on the camera was 1/125th second at f/8 at ISO 200.
Here’s a look at how everything was set up:
The camera on the tripod is approximately where I was standing (Margaret used the same lighting setup for a self-portrait). The SB-600 that I used for the backlight is on the pile of books on the coffee table behind Margaret. I angled the flash head up towards the wall, so I could get a nice gradual falloff towards the ceiling. Nothing fancy here.
Looking at the final image, you’d never know that it was shot in the middle of a living room using a blank wall as a backdrop. I love that I can use two relatively cheap speedlights and an umbrella and get a nice-looking studio-like portrait just about anywhere I want.
Here’s a fun head-shot of Margaret that I took during an introductory off-camera lighting lesson. Margaret’s going to be doing head-shots at work soon, and she asked me to show her some basic portrait lighting techniques. I was more than happy to oblige.
The lighting setup for this is pretty straightforward. The main light is a Nikon SB-600 at 1/4 power in a shoot-through umbrella up high and at camera right. The fill light is a second Nikon SB-600 at 1/16 power in a shoot-through umbrella down low and at camera left. If you look at the catchlights in her left eye, you can figure out exactly where the lights were positioned. The background is an empty wall in Margaret’s apartment.
I shot the image on my Nikon D300 with a Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens. The exposure was 1/125th second at f/8. Only minor post-processing was done in Lightroom (drop the exposure a tiny bit, add a bit of fill, boost contrast a little). For the most part, the final image is only slightly changed from the in-camera version.
I’m really happy with how this photo turned out. I was actually doing some lighting and exposure tests, and Margaret made faces the entire time. I just happened to snap this one at the right moment. It’s fun, spontaneous, and a fairly accurate representation of Margaret’s goofy and quirky side. What was originally a test shot is now the keeper of the session. I love it when that happens.
I just found out that my portrait of Sean got Honorable Mention in Zack Arias’s Seamless and Cyc Contest! How cool is that! The winners and other HM’s produced some awesome images, and I feel pretty good to be included in such excellent company. Definitely head on over to Zack’s blog to check out the winning images.
Thanks, Zack!
My cousin Jonina can be a scary little girl sometimes…
OK, not really, but she’s good at pretending. ;)
Recent Comments