Saving the World One Pixel at a Time

The ingredients for making great portraits are easy to find: You need a subject, a camera, and some light but like any good chef it’s how they’re prepared that goes into cooking up a delicious portrait. When talking about portraiture with amateur or aspiring pro photographers, they often tell me they want to do a better job but don’t have studios or expensive lighting equipment. Let’s not worry about where to make portraits because we all have access to the great outdoors and a better-than-average chance at creating great indoor portraits if we take the time to look.

One of my favorite techniques for outdoor portraiture is backlighting that can produce beautiful highlights on the subject’s hair. The next time you plan to photograph somebody outdoors, place them in a position that you might normally use with the sun on his or her face and then turn him or her around! Right away the subject is more relaxed because the sun is behind her and she won’t have to squint! Next turn on your flash. Be sure to use it, otherwise the subject will appear to be a silhouette.

In order to get a final image that you can live with, you may have to open the lens a few stops over the metered exposure just as you might with any backlit subject. If you plan to shoot full length portraits instead of close-up, a more powerful speedlight will be more effective than the weaker pop-up flashes found on entry-level digital SLRs.

The above portrait was created using an Olympus E-1 with 14-54mm f/3.5 and an Olympus FL-50 speedlight used as fill and an exposure of 1/160 sec at f/8 at ISO 200.

Many photographers are intrigued at the prospect of creating glamour photographs but may feel that not having the “proper” equipment makes this goal unattainable. Nothing is farther from the truth. My No Frills approach to glamour photography doesn’t require a studio and, as Wilford Brimley might have said, “You don’t even need any fancy studio lighting equipment.” All that’s really necessary to produce professional quality glamour images is a camera with interchangeable lenses, a few simple photographic accessories, such as reflector and speedlight, and models that are willing to pose for you.

Before

Here’s a few simple tips that will help make your first glamour photographs a little bit better. For the before and after examples shown here, the lighting, camera, lens and background are exactly the same. In the after example, with make-up and some retouching, many of the above tips were applied.

1. Avoid flashy jewelry. Make your model’s face, especially her eyes, the focus of the photograph.

2. Have her wear solid colors. Nothing detracts more than clothes covered with busy patterns and prints.

3. Make sure her clothing fits. If a model’s clothes don’t fit, use clips or the old stand-by spring-loaded clothespins (out of camera range) to snug them up. And this happens more often than you might think.

After

4. Change Hairstyles. Ask the model to style their hair differently for each change of clothing to add variety to the session and the photos that she can have in her portfolio.

5. Expression. Some models look great with a smile, others look better without one. Shoot a few test shots each way and make a determination what looks best for her. It will be obvious, right there on your camera’s LCD screen.

6. Make-up. When changing hairstyles or outfits, ask the model to changes her make up style and color too. It doesn’t have to be drastic, maybe a different lipstick color or darker eye shadow. Red lipstick rocks. Ask her to try it.

7. The Right Footwear. For a more a statuesque posture, ask the model to wear her highest heels. No high heels? Ask her to stand on her toes for s few shots.

8. Just Relax. A glamour shoot is a team effort. Model and photographer must work together to achieve the best possible images.

Joe is the author of  “Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography” thats available on Amazon and your favorite book or camera store.

When I was younger, I attended a photographic workshop on portrait posing and it went something like this: The speaker, a well-respected gentleman who was well known for his classic portraits, demonstrated how to pose a subject. It was basically pose A, then pose B, then Pose C. After a few minutes he asked me to show the group how to pose the model we had been working with and I didn’t remember a darn thing. It was too much detail for my brain to handle, so I won’t burden you with too much detail either.

If few portrait subjects are perfect, no pose if perfect either! That means compromises are inevitable and any “rules” you here from me or anybody should only be considered suggestions to get you started in the art of posing. And it really is an art because it combines reality with what you and your subject can accomplish on any given day. As you get more experience, you won’t even think about posing, you’ll just shoot. In the meantime here are a few simple guidelines that have worked for me over the years to get you started.

1. Don’t pose heavier subjects square to the camera. Besides lacking dynamics, it just makes a person look bigger. And speaking as someone who just lost 50 pounds, this is a big consideration for your subjects.
2. When they are standing in a three-quarter view (to the camera) have then put all their weight on the foot/leg that’s farthest away from the camera. This should put them in a relaxed position but it doesn’t always because they may not relax in the formal surroundings of studio portrait.
3. Posing is  easier in an outdoor setting because they are in more familiar environment, even if they may not be familiar with the specific location. It’s the sky, clouds, and all that stuff that help a subject relax. Plus it solves one of the perennial posing problems: What to do with a subject’s hands.

Exposure was 1/200 sec at f/5.6 and ISO 200.

(Above left) Is there a bigger cliché than an attractive woman on a motorcycle? I don’t think so. Even though this subject is fit, her shoulder and waist are square to the camera making her look larger than she really is. No portrait subject will like this pose, so I kept shooting. (At right) Now her shoulders are still square to the camera but the tilt creates a diagonal line and her waist is twisted in a different direction than her shoulder. Her face is also slightly pointed away from the direction her shoulders are pointed. Looser cropping also helps place her body within a large context in the frame. Canon 5D with 135mm f/2.8 SF lens was used for both shots, with a Canon EX550 speedlite was used for fill.

Joe is the author of the new book “Studio Lighting Anywhere”and “Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography.”

Flashpoint 620M monolight with 3x4-foot Flashpoint PZ soft box

In a recent podcast with Jason Anderson (www.canonblogger.com) we talked about lighting and the disparity in cost between a speedlight and a monolight.

For example, a Canon 580EX II speedlite costs $449. For Nikon shooters a SB-910AF speedlight cost $546 and while it might be argued that the Nikon flash is a much more capable shoe-mount flash, it can also be equally argued that a monolight kit, like the Flashpoint II 320M with 7-foot Light Stand and 33-inch white umbrella and carrying case is only $179. I think the monolight option is also an easier one to use and get started making portraits right away.

So if you’re looking for the most cost effective way for lighting portraits, here are a few features to keep in mind when considering a monolight for your studio lighting needs. As in all photography this involves a series of trade-offs between functionality, ease-of-use, and cost.

Continuously variable output: Some monolights have individual power settings of ¼, ½, ¾, and full, because sometimes when working with a individual you don’t want to blast your subject with enough light for an exposure of f/64 and melt their false eyelashes. And sometimes you just need more control than fixed power settings can provide. Having the output continuously variable allows you to fine-tune the exposure to get precisely the aperture and depth-of-field you want.

Proportional modeling light: Less expensive monolights may just provide a simple on or off light that will give you some idea of the final lighting effect but may not show the true effect of the power setting that you selected. However, working in a dark room it will make it possible for your camera’s autofocus to work faster. Monolights with proportional settings allow the modeling light output to vary with the flash output. Keep in mind that although the modeling light may be bright it is not as bright as the flash and when you use a low power setting the effect of the modeling light may be difficult to see under high ambient light.

Fan cooling: Placing the modeling light, power supply, and flash tube (that’s the glass tube that produces the actual flash from a capacitor filled with energy from the power supply) inside a single housing creates heat. A fan-cooled monolight is better than an air-cooled model but makes the monolight bigger, heavier, and noisier, and more expensive. Is it worth it? That’s up to you and your credit card company.

Portability: To many photographers the ability to have the power supply and light head in a single package makes for simple set up and greater portability. That’s why lots of companies offer packages consisting of monolights, umbrellas, light stands, and even a case for a single ready-to-go package. Portability is also why some people prefer speedlights even though they are much more expensive.

Joe Farace is the author of “Studio Lighting Anywhere.”

These days most digital cameras offer a monochrome capture mode and while you can always make adjustments after the fact using Photoshop or your favorite digital imaging software, I’d like to give you a few reasons why direct capture may be better for some shooters

Aesthetics: Sometimes too much color confuses viewer and takes the focus away from the real subject of the photograph. Shooting directly in black and white also impacts how you see while making images and getting the instant feedback possible with digital cameras helps focus that vision and lets you show your model what you’re trying to do. You don’t have to explain to your subject that you will convert the shot into black and white later; it’s already there on he LCD screen in black and white!
Workflow: There are many ways to use software to produce great looking black and white images from color files but if you want to make prints fast on-site using a PictBridge-based printer or drop your memory cards off at a local Target, capturing the file in black and white saves time.
Quality: Sometimes (depending on model) the quality of the camera’s black and white conversion exceeds what’s built into Photoshop, including using Channel Mixer or Black & White (Image > Adjustments > Black & White) function. Interestingly, when you capture using a camera’s monochrome mode the file may look like “real” black and white even though it remains as an RGB file.

That’s not to say that the best way to capture monochrome images is only in camera. It’s just another tool for creating monochrome images and as such you need to select the one that works best for any given shoot, so ultimately it’s your call. OK, I know what you’re thinking… what if you shoot in black and white and later change your mind wishing you made that image in color? These days almost all digital SLRs offers simultaneous color/monochrome capture using the RAW+JPEG option. Some cameras even have two memory card slots and allowing you to capture RAW image onto one memory card and JPEGs on the other. That means you can capture color RAW files on one card, while recording monochrome JPEG files on the other card! It doesn’t get much better than that! Check and see if your twin-slot digital SLR camera lets you do that.

So is in-camera monochrome capture that perfect solution? Nope. In an upcoming post, I’ll give you a few reasons why color capture and conversion later in the digital darkroom may be be the best option, especially for portrait photographer. In the meantime, you’ve got a few things to think about.