A few weeks ago I posted a headshot I took of an aspiring actress, and shortly afterwards Aoife (my wife) asked me to take a headshot of her in the studio so that she could update the picture that appears on her company website. We went into the studio last weekend on our return from Galway and got many photographs that were suitable for the website. At the end of the photoshoot, we decided to go for a more relaxed style of portrait using a different lighting scheme.
The lighting setup I employed for the company photo (see right) was relatively traditional for this sort of portraiture – a main light to camera right, a fill light lift the shadows to camera left (both raised above the subject), two lights cross-lighting the background to ensure it blew out to pure white, and a hair light behind and to the right of Aoife, aimed back towards the side of her head. The main light was fired through a large softbox and the fill light was fired through a medium softbox – both producing nice soft light, and the main light in particular was placed close to Aoife so as to wrap light around her.
The end result is a nice portrait, although I was forced into a particular look with the post-processing due to the need to match the new portrait to the look of existing portraits on the website – namely quite alot of sharpening and a slight blue tint.
With that shot in the bag, it was time for some more relaxing shots. We changed the lighting style to the beauty lighting that worked well for Leticia a few weeks ago, and which can be very flattering. That style is probably not suited to a corporate portrait – it is definitely more of a fashion look – which is why we only used it at the end of the shoot. In the midst of these last few photos I captured the image you see above with Aoife glancing away to one side – not a typical pose, but a fun one all the same.
The lights were set up with the main light (still in the large softbox) directly above the camera and at a 45 degree angle down on Aoife, and the fill light (still in the medium softbox) directly below the camera and at a 45 degree angle up at Aoife. I kept the background lights as they were to flood the white background with light and keep the look high key, and I really like the look that the hair light gives, so that light also stayed as it was.
I chose a large aperture for both portraits as I wanted to get the main and fill lights in close and was limited in how much I could dial those down, and also I could ensure a good depth of field to keep the portrait sharp from front to back. The shutter speed was 1/250s which is the maximum shutter speed that I could use and still use studio lights, but it could have been pretty much anything as there was no ambient light to speak of.
One interesting contrast between this shot and Leticia’s headshot is that I used all studio lights to do this photo, but used my Nikon flashes to do Leticia’s photo – and I don’t think there’s a noticeable difference between the two. Just goes to show that with the right light modifiers, the Nikon speedlights can be as good as studio lights in the right circumstances, with the added advantage of being much more portable.
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