A Quick Portrait Session
A good friend of ours, Judy, called us last week asking if I could shoot one photo of her for work. There was a rather short deadline and the project seemed simple enough... One headshot on a black background, traditional portrait orientation, a jpeg file emailed to her corporate office. I happen to enjoy photography as an enthusiastic hobbyist when my health allows and I have the equipment as well as the experience necessary for a small photography project like this one so I felt this was a favor I could easily tackle!
I was feeling pretty good, healthwise, when I spoke to Judy so we scheduled a time to do a quick portrait session...
As luck would have it, my health suddenly declined in the next couple of days so we needed to reschedule this session. This happens with my health all the time so this was no big surprise. Even though there was a short deadline to get this image to her corporate office, I knew my health would cooperate at some point in the next week to get the session completed. We rescheduled the shoot for a couple of days later.
The day arrived... I made sure I did not wear myself down by doing any other activities that day (something I must always do if I need to accomplish something specific)... I even rested for a couple of hours on the couch beforehand so I would be feeling pretty good for the shoot.
About two hours before Judy arrived, I started setting up. Sheila and I had already cleared out our kitchen/living room area of all clutter (mostly construction materials for our home renovations). I hung a black background from the ceiling as far as possible away from where I planned to place Judy. A close background is always bad news for portraiture... a background could be very distracting because of wrinkles, shadows, or it simply being too close to the subject... so I wanted this background as far away as possible. This is tough to do indoors and especially tough in a small home. I managed to get the background about eight feet behind Judy... I knew I could make that distance work.
I set up two light stands with white umbrellas and flashguns. I also hung large dark colored towels from the ceiling to act as a "gobo" (photography term for go-between) to block any stray light from hitting my black background. I had a snoot and some other light modifiers ready in case I needed them too. If stray light hits my background, that makes it tougher to get the scene and lighting just right. Stray light could also hit my background and make my black background appear gray instead! In addition to the two flashguns, I also added a large gold reflector on a stand in front of my subject to bounce light up under the chin so I could avoid terrible, unflattering shadows.
Initial setup required about an hour of work not including the time and effort put into clearing out all the construction materials (we could add another three hours or so if we include that too). I placed one of our barstools between the umbrellas for Judy to sit comfortably... and now I just needed a few test shots.
I chose my best lens for this shoot. It is a fast lens (large aperture) and is sharp. This lens is on my camera most of the time because it is so good and so versatile.
I had Sheila sit in the chair so I could shoot a few shots and adjust the lighting. While I was moving umbrellas around to get the light vs shadows just right... and adjusting flash power settings... I realized that Sheila was looking a bit distorted (in the images... not in real life!). Unfortunately, this lens was adding more distortion than I wanted to try to fix in post-processing so I needed to choose a different lens.
To avoid this wide-angle distortion that I was seeing with my first lens choice, I chose one of my telephoto lenses instead. I knew this telephoto lens is sharp but I also knew this lens is slow to focus in low light situations. Since I was using flashguns and it was night (we chose night purposely... I didn't want any stray light coming through the windows causing color temperature conflicts nor lighting areas I didn't want lit), I knew this lens would be slow to focus. I adjusted the ambient light so that I could easily focus and then set out to readjust all the lighting settings on the umbrellas. This solved the distortion issues.
Now using this telephoto lens with a longer focal length, I chose a slower aperture and a long focal length for indoors... I shot 105mm at f8. At this focal length, I was afraid I might need to backup so far that I would need to be standing in the backyard to shoot Judy while she sat in our living room but it turns out that I still was only three or four feet from my subject. I knew this lens would work just fine.
Then... I remembered that Judy would probably be wearing eyeglasses. This would complicate effective placement of my flashguns and umbrellas! Sheila pulled out her reading glasses and I then started inching lightstands in different directions to get rid of blinding reflections.
I managed to minimize reflections on the eyeglasses rather quickly. This reflected light issue is sort of like playing billiards... knowing how to calculate bounced angles and how much energy is key. After about a half hour of test shots, lens changing, and adjusting light placement for eyeglasses, we were ready for the shoot.
I had advised Judy to avoid wearing anything black. I didn't want whatever was black to disappear into the black background. She arrived wearing a nice white blouse which would work very nicely against our black background. Her makeup looked good and her hair was up. Once we had a couple of good shots with her hair up, I would have her let her hair down and we would try to get a couple of more good shots.
Before sitting Judy down, I explained how I would be posing her... how I would ask her to move her head... how I would use different posing techniques to minimize some signs of aging that we all hate about ourselves... and, I explained that although this unusual posing would probably feel very uncomfortable, I would need her to relax so we could capture some natural smiles.
Although we needed just one headshot to send to corporate, I decided to aim for four keepers... two with hair up... two with hair down. We kept things simple by not adding any additional poses nor additional outfits. All we needed was one good headshot.
In total, we shot for a little over an hour and we definitely captured four keepers... two with hair up, two with hair down. The following morning after spending hours post-processing these four images, Judy narrowed it down to two headshots and then asked her Facebook friends for their opinion of the best of her two choices.
Everyone seemed to see the same thing I was aiming for (thankfully)... a more casual, personable, friendly portrayal in the image with the hair down... and a more professional, business-like portrayal in the image with the hair up. For this corporate headshot, although everyone loved both photos, the version with the hair up was chosen by most of the hundred friends who expressed their opinion.
Here are the four images...
Perhaps more importantly, I feel as though I accomplished something significant and artistically beautiful while helping out a friend and making her happy which is always very nice but increasingly difficult and rare with my illness.
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