My beautiful wife is a political scientist at MSUB and I
really enjoyed making her new professional headshot. She is all business when it comes to
political science, so she wanted to look serious and chose the most serious
pose from the whole set. She’s not
messing around! Haha! It was fun to have her in the studio again
after a long time. I used to make her
pose for me all the time when I was learning the art of portraiture. She used to get so mad at me for making her
pose for too long! And that’s usually
when I got the best poses out of her, looking mad. So I love the stern look on her face, it
reminds me of the good old days!
Tip for photographers:
This is one of my favorite lighting setups at the
studio. It’s all natural light from a
big block of windows out of frame to camera right about two feet from Nisha and
two 4x8’ white reflectors in a V pattern opening towards Nisha out of frame to
the left. Without the reflector the
shadows on her face would be too dark and her hair would blend into the
background even more than it already does.
The background is a black wall. Beside
my preference for black backgrounds, I also like having my walls painted black
because it helps control the light in my studio, which can be difficult because
it is small, so it’s hard to prevent the light from bouncing everywhere. With a really large studio it’s easier,
because light falls off (reduces in power) over distance, so as long as you
have enough space between subject and background you can always make the
background go black, or light it separately and make it any exposure or color
you’d like, without having the background light affect the subject and vice
versa. But in a small studio we have to
use a lot of flags (usually black foam core) to block the light from hitting
anything we don’t want and reflecting back into our shot. It can be tricky, but if you’re struggling in
a small studio, I recommend reducing the light from ambient sources, and using
flags, grids, and light modifiers that will let you control your strobes. If you have a window, you can control the
quality of the light by opening or closing the curtains (or you can use a flag or
reflector if you don’t have curtains) to create just the light you want. Read more about manipulating natural light in the studio here.
Making lasting portraits of the people I love is one of the
most rewarding things about being a professional photographer. Portraits become more powerful with time,
even if they are often taken for granted in the short term. We will cherish this portrait one day, and I
would be honored to make a portrait of you for your loved ones to cherish. www.portraits.paulbellinger.com
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