A few weeks ago, I took the photos of about 30 employees for a government contractor in Fort Collins, CO. These were to be simple head shots for the company’s use on the web and in an employee directory. Nothing special.

Here’s a diagram to show how the lighting was set up for the employee photos:

The camera was about 15 feet from the subject, set to 70mm with a shutter speed of 1/250th to kill the ambient light. Aperture was set to 6.3 to throw that background a little out of focus (helped by the longer focal length). This also let me choose a low power on the flashes to use less juice and recycle quickly.

The key light was a Canon 430EX set to 1/4 power, and shooting through a translucent umbrella. I feathered the light forward to soften it and direct a good portion of the light across the subject and onto the reflector.

The gold reflector bounced the light back into the shadow areas and warmed them up, giving the subjects a nice glow.

The background light was a Vivitar 285HV, set to 1/16th power and zoomed out all the way to give a tight light pattern. It was up about 8 feet off the ground, and placed about 6 inches from the wall. The light was pointing down at about 45 degrees. This made the light sort of “skip” or “scrape” down that wall, adding lots of shadow to the rugged stone. Had I pointed the light straight at the wall from a distance, it would have come out looking flat and lack interest and shadow.

This was a very quick throw together shot. I got to the hotel about ten minutes before the employees, picked the spot in about a minute, and threw everything up in a hurry. Two test shots to get the lighting nailed and I was off and running. Bang bang bang, 30 people in about ten minutes. Each person was literally less than 20 seconds. They sit down, a couple posing instructions, *click*, “Next”.

Allow me to share an experience I had from a recent portrait session. My wife and I shot a family in Austin back in early November. The little boy was 15 months old and walking just fine. Typically, when we photograph children that are older than newborns, we like to at least incorporate some outdoor settings into the shoot. Since we have a photojournalist style of photography, we decided to make the focal point of the session a playground where the family could play and we could capture the fun.

Let me start by saying that shooting people on swings is really difficult. Sure if they’re not moving then everything is great. But focusing on a target that is moving back to front is an acquired skill. Autofocus is out. Manual focus is the only way. I like to find a focus point, stand still, and wait for the person to swing through that depth-of-field and try to hit the shutter at precisely that moment. It works pretty well, but I still toss out about 30 percent of the shots because the focus is off. The wider the aperture, the harder this gets. Too bad I like wide apertures…

Then there was this shot. I don’t remember what I said, but it made all three bust out laughing. I’ve learned that to get that one great shot, sometimes you just have to go for it and the technical stuff be damned. There was no time to refocus; the moment would have passed. So I shut up and took the picture. The focus is off and the whole shot is soft.

When we were going through the shots from the session, we almost tossed this photo because of the focus. Instead, we recognized it as a capture of a family’s fun moment with a technical flaw. We decided to keep the photo and present it to the clients. Turns out they loved it. It ended up being one of the featured images in a custom designed 8×10 inch press printed book we made for them. Once they saw it, they ordered five copies as Christmas gifts. This made me especially happy I just took the picture.

So the moral of the story? You can pick apart your images from a technical standpoint all day long. You can put them on forums and let others shoot them down. But don’t forget to look beyond focus, white balance, and other details at what the photo really says. Sure, you should strive for technical perfection, but don’t let it hinder you. If I put this photo on a forum, it would probably be shredded as a horrible failure. But in the end it doesn’t really matter, because the clients loved it, and bought lots of them.

The post-processing on this image was done in Lightroom and Matt Kloskowski’s “Vintage New York” preset was applied to get the unique color scheme. You can get the preset over at Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips.

A couple of weeks ago, I told you that I got my hands on a Vivitar 285HV shoe mount flash (click for more on that).

My first impressions of the flash were positive. With it’s uber-manual controls and low price ($89 from Amazon), this is a tough deal to beat.

Then I ran off to Colorado for five days and decided to bring my new flash along for the ride. I has intentions on getting some really great family portraits in Rocky Mountain National Park, but thanks to it being 35 degrees, wind blowing 50 MPH, and it snowing off and on, it didn’t happen. Did I mention I was wearing shorts? Yeah, the portrait setup wasn’t happenin’, no way. The good news for me though is that we’re about to put our house on the market and move there, so many portrait opportunities still remain to be had.

But I digress. My sister in law is pregnant with twins. What a great opportunity to bring some gear and get some nice maternity shots for her and my brother! Armed with two small flashes I had the control to get some great portraits of them in their new home in Colorado.

This article is part of the ‘Portrait Lighting For Beginners’ series. This series is meant to help you go from a beginning photographer to making beautiful portraits.

Photo by cloudnine

You now know how to create low key portraits using dark tones. Now you’re ready to move on to mid key portraits. Mid key lighting is simply lighting so that the overall tones in the photograph are somewhere in the middle. Not too dark and not too bright. That’s it. To make your portrait model stand out, you’ll want her to be the brighter part of the image.

Like low key lighting, this style of lighting lends itself nicely to one light portraits. Sure you can use more lights and reflectors if you want to, but you don’t have to. You can position your subject and key light in such a way that the light hits both the subject and spills on to the background. Because your subject will be closer to the light, she will automatically be brighter than the background, attaining the look you want.

Rui M. Leal of
Lighting Mods

Portuguese photographer Rui M. Leal has put together quite a blog that I think is right up your alley. It goes by the name Lighting Mods and is dedicated to showing you fantastic and cheap ways to improve your lighting by putting together your own lighting tools. I’ve been keeping tabs on Rui for some time now, and he has yet to let me down.

The latest lighting mod is a do-it-yourself soft lighting panel made of PVC. I myself have been meaning to put one of these together for quite some time but just haven’t gotten around to it. When I do, it will include the ability to act as a reflector using an emergency Space Blanket.

Check it out for yourself if you want to improve your portrait lighting on the cheap. Rui is now on part two of this three part series.


Got a great tip? Let me know about it and I’ll tell the world! With credit to you of course.

Back from my vacation in Colorado. Man what a beautiful place. I have every intention of finding a house to buy there and moving within the next year. The beauty of nearby Rocky Mountain National Park is unimaginable. So are the photographic opportunities that lie within. I can easily see myself slowly morphing from a portrait guy to a landscape and wildlife guy living there.

But back to the business at hand. Sometimes you slip up when taking photos. Usually those photos end up in the trash, but every once in a while you discover a winner and actually learn a technique that you might like to mimic in the future.

This photo is just such a mistake. It certainly won’t appeal to everyone, but I like it. First, I’m usually the one behind the camera, so I don’t have as many photos of my son and me. Second, I love the way the rays of the sun streak into the frame and flare into the lens. It really accentuates the fact that we’re out hiking in late afternoon at sunset.

My wife took this photo, and the flare was a complete mistake, just a fluke. But you’d better believe we’ll be pulling this technique out once in a while from now on to get similar results.

Do I look tired? This was at the end of a four mile, two thousand foot vertical hike with a 30 pound pile of baby strapped to my back. At 8,000 feet. No, I wasn’t tired. Not me.

This article is part of the ‘Portrait Lighting For Beginners’ series. This series is meant to help you go from a beginning photographer to making beautiful portraits.

Image by Chakoo

Low key lighting is perhaps my favorite style of studio lighting. There’s just something about the mood and drama that is created when you have a dark background with the subject standing out against it. Combine this lighting with some creative and dramatic posing and you have the power to create images that will be cherished for generations.

The Setup

The idea behind low key lighting is simple: dark tones, minimal lighting, and emphasis on certain areas of the subject. This is the perfect lighting setup for those of you with just one light, because single light portraits look great in this lighting scheme. While I have several lights with me on any given portrait session, when I get going on the low key setup, usually all get turned off but one. If I do use more than one light, it’s usually just to fill in a little bit of shadow detail so that the image isn’t too contrasty.

This article is part of the ‘Portrait Lighting For Beginners’ series. This series is meant to help you go from a beginning photographer to making beautiful portraits.

Image by johnlewis1513

Your first question right now is probably, “What the heck are these terms?” That’s understandable, especially if you’re new to portrait photography. So I’ll start this lesson by explaining what these poses are.

• Seven eighths view - This is a view of the subject that shows seven eighths of the subject’s face. Basically, this is a dead on view but with the face turned just slightly to one side.
• Three quarters view - This view shows three quarters of the subject’s face. Her face is turned 45 degrees from the camera and the far ear disappears from view.
• Two thirds view - This is probably the most commonly used facial position in portraiture. This is simply a position between seven eighths and three quarters. It provides for a nice comfortable pose without looking forced.

Lighting The Two Thirds And Three Quarters Views

This article isn’t just about telling you what these poses are. This is about telling you the best way to light them! Remember part six of this series on 45 degree lighting? If not, you might want to take a quick moment to go back and refresh your memory, because we’ll be using that idea again here.

My son at 4 weeks

Just about anyone who is good with a camera will eventually be asked to take photos of someone’s baby. If you’re a new parent, you probably take lots and lots of pictures of your new baby. In the first year of my son’s life, my wife and I took somewhere around ten thousand pictures of him. Many were portraits with lots of strobe use. This begs the question:

Can bright bursts of flash damage young babies’ developing eyes?

I’ve heard this before, and this topic came up a couple of weeks ago in the comments on my initial review of the Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens. Big thanks to Scott Hampton and Michael Deeter for getting the ball rolling on this one.

I’ve always operated under the assumption that flash bursts don’t do any damage to human eyes, even babies. But I thought this was an excellent opportunity to do a little digging and get some facts. Here’s what I found.

This article is part of the ‘Portrait Lighting For Beginners’ series. This series is meant to help you go from a beginning photographer to making beautiful portraits.

Split lighting.
Clicky for larger

We continue our series on basic lighting setups with split lighting. Split lighting is simply lighting half of the subject’s face, while leaving the other half in complete shadow. This form of lighting creates a sense of drama in a portrait and really adds a little variety to a portfolio of images. While this isn’t my favorite of lighting setups, I do break it out from time to time to see what I’ll get. You can see here that even with a baby, you can create quite a mood with this type of lighting.

The image at left is another of my (then five month old) son. If you read the last section in this series on Profile Lighting, I told you that I caught my son in profile by mistake. This split lit shot was actually the shot I was going for when his little bobble head swung off in one direction to pay attention to God knows what, probably the cat.

Here’s how to set up a split lit shot.