Studio Portrait Photography I

This class came after our Architectural Interiors class, although I liked it I was happy to get back into the studio to photograph people again.

The primary focus of this class was to expand upon what we learned about light in our Intro to Light and Product and Still Life Studio Lighting classes. And as the name of the class would suggest, our focus was exclusively on learning about proper portrait lighting and basic posing for men and women. We had Jack Foley for this (and Studio Portrait Photography II, a post that will be written soon) and I think he and I both share the same taste in lighting styles, everyone is a little different and some don’t completely agree and that’s fine, but I really took a lot away from this and the next class.

We worked on using a hot light (continuous light) to duplicate the appearance of a sun in the studio then moved on to using strobes. We started with one softbox as the key light, then added a fill light, then a background light, then a kicker/hair light to complete the “traditional” four light setup. For this module we only photographed each other. I really loved learning about adding the kicker and background lights, when used the right way you can really add a lot of dimension and create separation from the background.

Here are a couple of favorites from the continuous lighting exercise we did, this is my classmate Erin:

Continuous light, no modifier

Continuous light with diffusion panel

Here are some examples of when we switched to strobe from continuous light, again our school uses Profoto packs and modifiers. This is my classmate Aimee:

Single softbox as key light

Key + fill light, both softboxes. Cloned out 2nd catch light in eyes.

Here is the progression of adding lights for the “traditional” four light setup. Softboxes were used for the key and fill lights, the background light has a grid and I believe we used an umbrella on a boom for the hair/kicker light. This is Steve:

Key + fill

Key + fill + hair/kicker

Key + fill + hair/kicker + background

I take back what I said about only photographing each other in this module now that I’m looking back in my Lightroom catalog, the last shooting class we had people come in but on that night we used my camera tethered to Steve’s laptop, I cannot remember which photos I shot and which were his. That’s ok, there will be examples in my next post!

What do you think, did I do ok? I feel like I started off very strong with portrait photography, that being said, I still have plenty to learn.

Note: We have had more classes photographing people since I took this and I have gotten better!