This photo makes me all sorts of happy. There’s obviously a lot of movement, but it looks calm and controlled. Margaret is smiling and not making a try-not-to-snap-neck-while-flipping-hair face (anyone who’s taken similar photos will know exactly what I’m talking about). And the lighting is nice and soft and completely not the focus of the image.
The setup for this is very simple and straightforward. I positioned Margaret about 5 ft. from the wall, so that any light I had on her wouldn’t cast any shadows. I had two Nikon SB-600s in shoot-through umbrellas positioned at about 45° off-axis at camera left and camera right. The one on the right was at 1/4 power providing most of the direct light as well as bounce light around the room. The one on the left was at 1/16 power giving me just enough light to fill the shadows a bit. Both lights were right around head-level and about 4 ft away from Margaret. The exposure is ISO 200 and 1/250th sec at f/8.
As you can see, nothing really fancy here. The emphasis of the photo is the hair movement, so I wanted to make sure that everything was broadly lit and that there were no obvious hard shadows. Shooting at my max sync speed of 1/250th sec. allowed me to freeze the hair motion, but, even then, there’s still a little bit of blurring that adds a nice soft quality to the image.
The final touch was some liberal post-processing in Lightroom to make the colors pop. I really like how the blue-green wall complements Margaret’s purple shirt and red hair. I won’t go into the details here (I’m developing yet another Develop Module Preset that I will talk about when it’s gone through some more testing and fine-tuning passes), but I will say that the back wall is actually a warm off-white color in the unedited photo. The original colors weren’t necessarily bad, but they were a bit too monotone for my tastes. I’ll save the discussion for another blog post.
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 love cross-processed film. I hate waiting and paying for it. So, I’ve been working on recreating some cross-processed looks in Lightroom using existing presets as examples. Originally, I was only playing with white balance tweaks and HSL adjustments, but I was never really happy with the results. Then I figured out how to use split toning to get the looks I wanted (yeah, I’m a little slow sometimes…), and now I’m happy.
To test out the new presets, I pulled some images from a recent self-portrait shoot and went to town with the processing. The base lighting is the same in all images — Nikon SB-600 at full power with a CTO gel at camera left, sun at camera right.
Here’s what the original colors looked like:
And here are three variations on the cross-processed look I’ve been working on:
Overall, I’m pretty happy with how they turned out. I still need to do some tweaking to find a good starting point for the preset(s), but I’m starting to get the colors and tones that I want. Someday, I might even share those presets. :)
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