‘A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person.’ or that what Wikipedia says anyway, and I do fully agree.
We did a workshop the other day with Calumet in Birmingham looking at different aspects of using light to provoke and and express emotion. We looked at the three main lighting types that are used when trying to create expression and emphasise character.
Thank you to everyone who made it a wonderful day – you can download the full PDF here
A big thank you to Reece, Tom & Adele who helped from Calumet & a very big thank you to Stephie who helped us create some great images as our model. You can get in touch with Stephie here: http://purpleport.com/portfolio/peliroja/
A quick wrap up & overview – During the workshop looked at:
Lighting:
Rembrandt Lighting
Split Lighting
Butterfly Lighting
- Use of Filters – (Lee Filters + Grads)
- Backgrounds
- Styling
- Colour V’s Monochrome
- Glamour V’s Fashion
- What is a provocative photographer
- De-constructing images
- Images that speak
Something we spent a little bit of time on was the posing and the different messages we can take out of images by the way we pose & light the subjects.
During the workshop we also looked at many wonderful photographers work such as Gregory Heisler – http://www.gregoryheisler.com/- The quote I could not remember was ‘The work is primarily subject-driven. All decisions flow from there. The photographs are all made in response to a unique subject, in particular context, at a specific moment in time. The thoughtful preparedness that defines my working method actually facilitates spontaneity and allows me to embrace surprise. I always have a game plan but view it as merely the jumping off point.’
These are the Lee Filters that we used:
Lee Neutral Density 0.6 Soft Graduated Resin Filter
Lee SW150 Neutral Density 0.6 Hard Graduated Resin Filter
The Teathertools cable stuff is here:
http://www.uklight.co.uk/tether-tools.html
Here are a couple of sample images that I shot during my quick lighting demo. For these demo shots I used the Cactus RF90 & the Roundflash. Shooting such a set up lets me shoot wide open like in the sample images below that are all shot at super wide f-stops such as f1.2.
Butterfly:
125th, iso200, Fuji X-T1, 56mm APD, F1.2
Split Lighting:
125th, iso320, Fuji X-T1, 56mm APD, F1.2
Rembrant:
125th, iso200, Fuji X-T1, 56mm APD, F1.6
Fashion / Nude image:
125th, iso320, Fuji X-T1, 56mm APD, F1.6
Here are a few links to help you find some of the stuff mentioned in this blog post, also remember to sign up for the newsletter which can be found here.
