Category: Portrait photography

One-light studio portrait

The other day I was trying out some lighting setups to try to delve deeper into how the light alters the mood of a portrait.  

Today’s self-portrait is the one below.


Notice how the light is coming from camera right angled down but we can still see details on the other side of the face. This is done by using a large white circular reflector on camera left. By placing the reflector closer or further from the subject you can control the amount of light that is bounced back on the subject. This is the bts shot of the setup. 


So there you go, enjoy yourselves and keep pressing that shutter!

From daylight to evening with the help of one speedlight and controlling the aperture

For this portrait I wanted to mix it up a bit and completely change the mood of the scene. 

The setting was midday and the sun was out and through the tall windows the light was pouring in. I wanted to transform that bright light into a calm evening setting. 

So how do you manage to change daylight to evening light? Well you play around with your shutter speed and aperture. By stopping down and capturing the tone you want you can transform this bts shot:


Into something like this using a single speedlight and a suitable softbox. 


As you can see the ambient light was fairly strong so I needed to close down my aperture to get a darker scene and at the same time up my speedlight to get a nice exposure on me the subject. 

Here’s a black and white version of another shot using the same technique. 


So there you go, enjoy yourselves and keep pressing that shutter!