Some Portraits
This last week, I practiced using the studio lights at the school to get some portraits.
This first one is of Zack Thornton. He came in and wanted a photo of himself for a friend… So I took him to the studio and got some shots. The first ones had some problems. One of which was that one of the strobes wasn’t firing. I posted some of those pictures below, just to show the problems.
EXIF:
- Shutter: 1/100 sec
- Aperture: f/8.0
- ISO: 100
- Lens: 50mm f/1.8 II
The first photo I took (of Zack) really was just to get a nice professional looking portrait. There are no special effects… No photoshop… no funny props… Nothing. Just a good pro portrait. This could be an id card photo… maybe.
Next, I went on to get some photos of Jared Pierson. I saw this fancy bamboo plant and was inspired to shot some photos… so I did. I suppose I could use my brother’s site as a influence… since he used the same bamboo plant for a portrait of Brandon.
This photo was really just shot spontaneously. Jared came into the class and I was practicing some strobe related things, and I just shot this photo. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the synch cable or pocket wizard, so I just used my on-camera flash to trigger the strobes. This photo, had a little more creativity involved. But it really isn’t a top notch photo, just something unique. I did some selective color, some unsharp mask, and other Photoshop magic.
EXIF:
- Shutter: 1/60th
- Aperture: f/4
- ISO: 400
- Lens: Canon 50mm f/1.8
- On-camera flash: forced
Next, my brother, Stephen, was in my room, and I just took some quick photos of him. Below are some of the results.
These photos were shot using strobes, at my house. I was experimenting with lighting ratios, and getting good looking portraits as practice for SkillsUSA. In Photoshop, there is a RAW conversion, then I did some levels, unsharp mask, highlights and shadows (just a little though, too much looks bad), and some cloning.
Finally here are some mistakes, rejects, before-and-afters and the contact sheet:
November 4th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
So as you you are shooting with the strobes at home, what are you learning? Are you getting more comfortable with them? What exactly are you trying?
What was your goal for this week?
The shot of Zack I would have to say is the strongest. It is the most engaging photo, it draws the viewer in the most. The expression on him seems to be the most sincere, not posing for the camera but who he really is.
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November 10th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
I don’t really like the photo of zach or jared, i think it just looks like another yearbook photo. I do like the photos of stephen with the strobe lights it gives it a cool look and gives it an unreal but yet really good look.
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