Kelvin contacted me to take some headshots of him to use in various online profiles, social media pages, and so on. We walked around Crystal City (in Arlington, Virginia) taking photos with a few different outfits and several different backgrounds and lighting combinations.
Last week I had the opportunity to create some headshots and portraits of a good friend of mine. I set up a neutral gray background, positioned my studio lights, and set her in motion so that the camera could capture her natural good looks. First, a few technical notes. As with all photo sessions, there are tried and true methods of creating headshots, and that’s what I started with. The main light is a gridded beauty dish above and to the camera left, with a large gridded softbox positioned horizontally below and to the camera right as fill. In this case, the fill is almost as strong as the main light, but the softbox does not create the specular highlights on her skin that the beauty dish does (on the camera left side of her face). This combination of crisp light from the beauty dish and diffuse light from the softbox gives a nice touch that is neither too hard nor too soft, but "just right" if you’re looking for a middle ground between the two.
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These photographs are inspired by some of the old celebrity photographs from the golden age of Hollywood. The photographs of George Hurrell come to mind as some of the most famous. They’re not carbon copies of any specific photographs. They’re my own creations, with a nod back toward yesteryear. There is something timeless about this type of work. I am fortunate enough to have good friends who have extensive collections of vintage fashion, and who know the ins and outs of styling the hair and makeup to emulate eras gone by.
Recently, I went on a walk with my friend Simona through Old Town Alexandria, just across the Potomac River from Washington DC. After the record snowfall of the winter, how nice it was to see the warm sun again and be reminded that spring always follows winter. The sun can make great photos possible. Photographs need light, after all, and the sun is the best source of light there has ever been. As great as it is, sunlight is only a single source of light, and it has a tendency to cast harsh shadows unless it is somehow modified or supplemented. This post discusses one of many possible ways to supplement sunlight by making a little sunlight of your own using off-camera flash. You can approach things conservatively and subtly fill in the sun’s shadows, or you can be even bolder and overpower the sun completely, or even manufacture sunlight after the sun has already gone down. That’s the power of off-camera flash.
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