I love shooting portraits in the studio. I love the feeling of total lighting control. My space isn't very big but it's pretty efficient. For these two images I used my favorite lighting set up. It's one big (six by six foot) frame, covered with white silk diffusion material at about a 35 degree angle to the subject. My camera is right at the leading edge of the diffusion panel....actually touching the frame. I used three big fluorescent lighting units to push light through the silk. What this gives me is a big, soft, but directional light source that I can use to sculpt light across a face in a very flattering way. Since my studio has an all white interior I placed some black panels to the shade side to keep the portrait from getting too filled in.
Once your great big light is set you've got a lot of lee way to let your model move around and be comfortable in the space.
I used the Samsung camera's touch screen to actually take the images. I would touch the part of the screen where I wanted the camera to focus and then I'd touch the virtual shutter button to take the image. It was kinda fun but after a while the novelty wore off and I went back to composing in the EVF.
I like the look of the images. And I like the perspective of the longer, 85mm lens on this APS-C format. But most of all I liked composing in the square on that big, juicy rear screen. When I mentioned earlier that I thought this camera would make a good studio camera that's what I meant....you could compose on a huge screen so that even if you are cropping square there's still a ton of real estate with which to play.
Big thanks to Noellia for dropping by and letting me put my toys through their paces. Hope you've had a weekend of shooting fun stuff.
4 comments:
Beautiful, Kirk - but you know that already... :-)
The "Wild Free" shirt makes the bottom portrait even better. All the elements come together perfectly and make me smile.
"Why do I like continuous light over flash for stuff like this? Well, it just feels more kinetic and alive."
And Noellia seems to be much more animated in these shots than in others you have posted. This style of shooting makes looks much more interesting (for lack of a better word), less static. Have you noticed a change in the look, poise, expressions of your portrait subjects since you started using continuous lighting?
Yes, Craig. We're less bound to the idea of technical perfection. That makes everyone relax a bit.
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