It’s the first weekend in a long while that is completely free of any obligations and todos – I handed in a major paper at my university and my upcoming final thesis is not going to start before september. What a great feeling! I was planning on doing some location scouting in the region. I heard that there is a real sand dune in the middle of a small town nearby (I honestly don’t have the slightest clue as to why or how it ever got there), so I was going to check it out. And, while I’m there, do some nice, quick and easy portraits.

Not alotta gear, just my small diy softbox with a half cut of cto to add some spice to the nice available light. The dune itself turned out to be smaller than I expected, and well, with less sand. Well, restrictions are often a good thing, ’cause they force you to be creative and work with what’s there. Speaking of which, I had the 50mm walk-zoom lens on the camera, which I almost use exclusively on my camera since I can’t afford any other lens right now – another layer of creativity jogging restriction.

So I worked with some perspectives that I don’t normally use that often (model sitting, me standing) to try out something new, we had a little fun with throwing sand and freezing it mid-air (which is surprisingly easy) and walked around on the dune to find new perspectives and backgrounds. One thing that I’m really excited about is that David Hobby, who said that you start to get the kinda-scary ability to guess exposure and power levels pretty close to the optimum, is absolutely right: It normally takes me about one to three test-images until I’m perfectly happy with the light – no flash meter, no scientific method needed.

It really is that easy: Measure the environment, decide at which level relative to your light it should be, guess the power level on the flash (depending on distance, light color, light shaper) and pop some test frames. And once you’re good to go, you can just fire away – or switch roles and let the photographer be the model.

Word-of-mouth marketing works! This nice guy here is a friend of a friend. He was planning to send out applications starting next week, so he needed a nice portrait – pronto, por favor! He wasn’t too happy with the portrait that a professional photographer had taken of him the day before. Following the advice of that friend he stumbled upon this blog and really liked what I did for those guys. Fortunately, I had all my equipment at the university that day (I’ll tell you why very soon), so we arranged a spontaneous shooting at the nearby university building.

For this shoot, I was going to try different setups. As you know, I like to add a little structure or a pattern to the background to spice things up a little. Yet, due to the comments I received about the last pictures, I decided to do one shot with a more classic background. For that, I had the model stand in front of a plain dark gray wall (actually, a door), aimed one flash on the background to add a little gradient and lit him with my selfmade umbrella softbox from top left and bounced some light back with a reflector from the right. Again, I added a cardboard-gridded flash on camera right, from behind his face to add a little highlight on his jawline. This is the picture that he liked the most and that he will use to send out his applications.

The other shot is more like my “classic” style – a nice pattern of some stairs, softbox top right, reflector from the left. Even if he’s not going to use it, it’s great to have a variety to chose from. And that’s what makes me different to most professional photographers: Even though the whole shoot took about 30 minutes, I had about 90 pictures in the can, meaning that at least a few of them had the right expression – it’s just a matter of statistics.

Here are some portraits that I did for Jerry, who asked me to take some “nice” pictures of him after he saw my new World Cup portraits and liked the “look”. Well, of course I said yes: I would never want to miss out on a chance to get some more practice, especially when I can add a little light ? la David Hobby and test some new equipment.

The day was beautiful, which means it was beautiful to everyone who either doesn’t take pictures with small flashes or to owners of some serious high-power flashes. Why? Well, I guess my model for the day kinda liked the bokeh of my 50mm lens (the only agreeable lens that I own), so I was definitely going for low aperture values. Of course, I coulda just placed him in a shaded area and snap some quick and easy portraits with the ambient light (which is basically what I do with the World Cup portraits). Too easy – I wanted to add light. Overpower sunlight. Have control over the lighting – just because. Being a studious reader of Strobist (who, ironically, posted a new story dealing with this issue a couple of days later) I knew that there are several ways to stop down the environment so that your small, weak flashes can actually overpower the ambient.

So I was prepared. I took a crappy slow lens (35-135 f/4-5.6), screwed the polarizing filter on to kill another few stops (when at the right angle to the sun), set the ISO down to 50 and picked a nice location with lots of trees that should give some shade. However, once we were at the location and I finally metered the ambient through the lens, I realized that the number-one measure to avoid the issue (go to a shaded area) worked so well that I didn’t need anything else. Switched back to the 50, and I could even go for apertures around f/5 with times around 1/200s (can’t sync any faster than that with my camera) and had the flash on 1/2 power. This way I achieved my goal number one for the day: control the light.

My second goal for the day was to test my new DIY umbrella softbox. As you might know, I’ve worked with cheapo umbrellas so far and I’ve been pretty happy with them. It’s really easy with them to get light onto the subject. However, it’s really hard keeping light off anything else, which is not a problem in big spaces, but it sure is one in small rooms. To put it in Joe McNally’s words: The hardest thing about lighting is NOT lighting. The standard solution in the biz is, of course, the softbox. Soft, yet directional light that doesn’t go everywhere. Being on a budget (as usual), I decided to DIY one. I found this beautiful tutorial which gave me exactly what I was looking for: I want everything to fit in my gear bag, so it had to be foldable like an umbrella – just like the Westcott Apollo, yet, $150 less cost. Got me a reflective umbrella for the cheap, did the magic and there it was, my ticket to directional light. I was pretty happy with my preliminary tests that I did with this handsome model I had flown in for the night, but of course, this baby was waiting for real action.

Well, the third goal I had in mind was to get the light up high, away from the classic 45?-camera right. Also, I wanted to test several positions to find out how to feather the light (i.e., turn away the softbox center from the subject so that not the hottest area, but the soft edge hits the subject). So I had the box up high camera left – and I was a little unhappy with the results. Too much on the hair, not enough in the face. So I threw in a small gold reflector camera-right (held by my lighting assistant for the day) to get some nice, warm tones. Also, I put a half cut of CTO on the flash and balanced for daylight. The reflector saved this setup and I was very happy with the soft light and that little sparkle in the eyes. I allowed some of the ambient light to mix with my main light – this way I didn’t need a lot of bang from the softbox, just about enough to create some nice skin tones. Being able to improvise definitely seems to be a crucial skill.

For my personal portfolio, I wanted some “moody” and more dramatic shots after we were done with the two other light setups. Normally, I like my subjects to give me (or my camera) a big smile – you know, my standard “nice” portraits. With this shot I was going for something with more “character”, like the Johnny Cash shot from Michael Grecco. So I put a cardboard grid on my flash and had him look right into the light that I placed 4 ft away. I like the tight hotspot and the nice falloff. I might become a grid fan – when used on the “right” face, it’s a nice look. It’s certainly not a classic beauty light, but, fortunately, some faces can definitely take it. Overall, a great learning experience!

Saturday night, around sunset time, I felt the itch to play with some strobes. I quickly grabbed my gear and my model for the night and set off to the nearby university. Has lots of big old buildings, and for some reasons, I felt like shooting brick walls (instead of the usual running against them). Also, I was going for something more experimental, stuff you don’t do to somebody who has to be looking fabulous on the picture. So instead of the usual flattering, soft light, I did the opposite: Cardboard-snooted hard light.

I started with two strobes: Main light gelled with CTO on camera right, another light with CTB fired against the background. The setup took me about 2 minutes, and another 3 or 4 shots to get the balancing right. I decided to use just a teeny bit of that quickly dropping ambient light, so I dragged the shutter just a little. I actually had to power down the strobe on the right to 1/32, the background strobe ended up around 1/8th. When shooting with hard light, there are a few things you need to consider. One thing is to have a model that can take the hard light. Honestly, it’s just not a flattering light. Luckily, to quote Joe McNally, there are some people that still look great when you throw a car headlight at them. The other thing is to have them look into the light source: Easy-peasy trick to erase unwanted nose shadows.

As the sun was completely gone, I wanted to finish with something simple. My camera had a hard time focusing, so I set the focus on manual. For this shot, I just shot through a white brolly and used some of the reflection on the steel wall as a little separating light (look on her hair to see what I mean).

Finally, to achieve that kinda edgy look I was going for, I cross-processed some of the pictures. The important thing for me is to know how to get the lighting right (know the rules) and still do all the mistakes – intentionally. Joe McNally says, to make something look interesting – don’t light all of it. And I guess, he’s right. Doesn’t have to be all bright and shiny. Histogram? Not today, my friend!

Last weekend, I shot some business portraits for two really cool guys from my university. I like to do projects like these whenever I find the time, because they are a good practice and they are a lot of fun to do, too. I try to deal with these kinds of assignments in a quite professional way so that I have an incentive to deliver my best. And as I am exploring the intriguing Strobist (see previous post) “techniques” more and more (you can’t really call ‘em techniques, it’s more like an approach to consider lighting in a thoughtful way) of course I use a project like this to try some new lighting setups.

When I saw what I had on the chip, it somewhat made me think back to the very first business portraits that I took using the available light only. This first picture is one example: The available light, enhanced by only a small, foldable reflector, gives a very smooth, even lighting. And thinking “business portrait”, I’d say that’s kind of what you’re looking for. After all, the light in a portrait used to accompany the resum? in a formal job application shouldn’t scream “Hey! Look at me! See how cool I am?”. All it should do is bring out the features of the face in a nice, subtle, flattering way. These are all things available light can do – given the right weather, the right time of day and the right location (or at least the right angle).

If you don’t have all that, available light can be a pain. Take that from someone who actually loves available light. For these two pictures above, I simply selected locations that were in the shade to achieve an even lighting. Still, you’re somehow at the mercy of all the outdoor conditions – you’re not in control. Fortunately, becoming part of the Strobist movement is all about achieving control over your light. And it’s not even expensive. Calling yourself an available light photographer often has to do with being a budget photographer, which you can remain using some cheapo speedlights instead of huge (studio) lighting gear. Addionally, as you can see from my pictures, having a history in on-location shooting with available light stimulated my love for nice background patterns that create an interesting contrast to the ordinary plain-white seamless backgrounds you mostly see on business portraits.

Long story short, here are my new portraits that I shot on location (university buildings used as backdrop) using my recently acquired small lighting gear. As I mentioned above, I tried to keep it subtle, yet add some accentuation to fit their type. The beauty of this shoot was that I was in absolute control over my light. The flashes could have easily overpowered the available light on the shot, but I decided to use it to add some fill. The setup was simple: One shoot-through umbrella on camera right, one snooted light on the background, one cardboard-gridded spot on the cheek from camera left and back to add some interesting contrast.

Are these pictures any better than the available light portraits? I don’t know. Let me know what you think using the comment button! What I did enjoy, however, is the amount of control that I had in the last shoot. As David Hobby wrote, don’t let good light ruin a photo, the most important thing is still the subject – a great smile, the right atmosphere, and so on. Which is why I kept the setup simple so I didn’t need to set things back and forth after I had them in the ballpark within 5 test shots and could instead focus on the subjects.