Title: "Portriat Session 1"
Shot data: 1/160s f/5.6 at 130.0mm iso200
Camera / Lens: Canon 40D / Canon 100-400mm L zoom
6637 - Sankt Veit II
1 day ago
Monday, June 29, 2009
Portrait Session
The Bay Area Photo Club had a field trip late Saturday afternoon to a local park. Other members had arranged to have a few folks show up to act as models and we all had an opportunity to practice our portrait skills. I was using a homemade beauty dish on my Canon 430EX flash to the left of the subjects. My light became a key light on the little girl and a fill light on her mother. I didn't end up taking a lot of photos but I took enough to know I still need quite a bit of work with both portraits and lighting. Anyway, I like this shot and possibly one other that I will try to edit and post tomorrow. Thanks to Bob Dempsey for setting up the outing!
Title: "Portriat Session 1"
Shot data: 1/160s f/5.6 at 130.0mm iso200
Camera / Lens: Canon 40D / Canon 100-400mm L zoom
Title: "Portriat Session 1"
Shot data: 1/160s f/5.6 at 130.0mm iso200
Camera / Lens: Canon 40D / Canon 100-400mm L zoom
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13 comments:
I think the lighting worked out well, IMHO. I looked at the shot on screen with a square crop [from the right side]and thought less negative space on the left might be an improvement. Check it out...
A nice portrait.
Two things that may have made it better:
- Your flash and the sun light are at about the same intensity. That split lighting works if it's more similar in look. But here the color temp is very different. Having one brighter than the other may have solved this.
- Then there's the color temp in the first place. Always an issue if you mix flash/ambient. A gel on your flash could have lessened the effect.
Jan
Thanks Larry and Jan!
Larry - I can see cropping back to about halfway between where I am now and square but I don't see going completely square because I don't think it leaves enough room for the subjects to be looking into. What do you think? Would a comprimise work?
Jan - Good points Jan! I assume the gel I needed would have been a CTO?
Cheers!
Barry
-My mind is still trying to organize all the various conflicting inputs from my course last week. Maybe we can learn together?
-I saw something huge that they called a “beauty light” last week but it looked like a reflecting dish with a large flat plate in the center. Out of ignorance I would have predicted that the strobe would have been harsh but it was soft. Something like the effect of a softbox directly in front of the subject but lightly higher, with the photographer blocking part of the light.
-I was told that a speedlite flash was a harsh source. What did you do to make it softer because the child’s faces does look softer. I do agree that the stronger light on the woman’s face does seem to come from slightly behind her on the right, giving a shadow of her check on her lip and highlights in her hair. Jan said that the two sources were about the same intensity, so I have much to learn? But you can see the speedlite in their eyes.
-Forget the the techical stuff. I like the image.
Yes, it would be a warming gel, since your flash is much cooler than the late day sun light. CTO is a warming gel, though which strength you need depends on the specific lighting conditions.
BTW - if you want to play with this, you could process the image twice with different white balance settings, and then merge the two shots in Photoshop. That is another (after the fact fix) for this problem. Process one copy and push the white balance of the flash to the warmer settings to get closer to the sunlight. Since it's the same image it's easy to merge with a simple layer mask.
Jan
Wayne - The beauty dish is a DIY project based on instructions located here: http://davidtejada.blogspot.com/2008/04/beauty-dish-for-sb-800.html
It does produce a very soft reflected light as you observed (very similiar to a softbox). In this photo the brigher and warmer light is from the sunlight shining in from the right side of the photo (my dish was on the left throwing the cooler colored light). Jan's main point is that the two sources of light would have worked better if they were similiar color temps.
Jan - The post-processing fix you suggest sounds interesting. I'll give it a go! Thanks!
Cheers!
Barry
The soft light on the child's face is so beautiful! Thanks for the Tejada link. Barry, how is the beauty dish different from a ring flash on the end of your lens?
Thank you Shirley!
The your camera lens goes through the middle of a ring flash and so it is supposed to be the ultimate in "wraparound" lighting. The biggest difference to me however is the $$$$$! My homemade beauty dish was about $20 since I already had the strobe. :-)
Cheers!
Barry
I agree with Jan, a CTO gel might have balanced the light somewhat, but, from shooting these same two people together, I found that their skin tones were very different--the child had a light red/pink tones while the aunt had a very somewhat dark olive tone skin. This idea was exasperated by the fact that the little girl was in cool light and the aunt was in the shade.
I was able to shoot only about five photographs of the two of them and mine has some of the same problems, even though I had a 1/2 cut CTO gel on my flash.
I think the lighting you selected is very interesting. It gives you a different look that the mind needs time to sort-out. Good job.
I may be a bit biased, but I think this is a beautiful portrait of my niece and I. Thank you. My entire family has enjoyed seeing it. They've all remarked how great it is to see me in front of (instead of behind) the camera.
It's great too to see the effects your homemade setup has. The differences in our skin tones definitely makes it a bit difficult in the circumstances and I have been wondering over the past day how it would have differed if our positions were reversed, with my niece having more of the sunlight on her.
Thank you Patrick and Colleen!
Patrick - I love the way you referred to "the lighting you selected"! It makes it sound like I actually had a plan for this shot! :-)
Colleen - I'm so glad you like it! The subject's opinion is the most important after all! :-) I have a lot to learn about the technical aspects of portraiture and lighting so I mostly try to create an image with good composition and expression. I really love your expressions in the photo! I'll make sure and get a copy of the photo to you! Thanks for stopping by my blog.
Cheers!
Barry
The expressions are what I love most about this portrait.
I'm curious though - you mentioned in the original post that there was a second image you might work on. My sister (my niece's mother) and I are both anxious to see what you captured. Any chance we can see?
Thanks for sharing your work.
Barry - ran into the same issue on a shoot last night, and tried out another way of fixing it. Described it in a blog post: balancing color temp.
Cheers,
Jan
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