Making nice, natural an good-looking portraits does not need to be either expensive nor difficult. The photo above of the lovely Bernadette was taken with an absolute minimum of equipment: two heads with softboxes and a reflector.
The head on the right side was equipped with a standard 60×60 softbox and was shooting on 1/8 and the right head had a 60×80 softbox with grid installed and was set on 1/16.
The reflector is a standard model of ebay with a gold/silver side in the size 80cm.
No post-processing has been done to this image besides compressing it from the original RAW format…
So….. Why do I tell you all of this?
Some weeks back I asked you all what you would like to see on this blog and one of the things that kept popping up was BTS, setups and simple lighting solutions. Yes, I am using expensive lighting products from Profoto and Elinchrom but.. If you do not have a few K to spend then there are other solutions; standard 250w-1000w studio sets can be bought on Ebay for a few hundred dollars and the are the PERFECT introduction to portrait photography (and product photography)
To assist bit with the basics I have also included a L-diagram below with the basic set-up I used on this shot.
For in-depth information and great articles about Lighting 101 I recommend you to visit STOBIST where David Hobby can teach you everything you need to know and much much much more… -Always worth a visit!
It has been a long time since I did a shoot in a studio but yesterday I was back! the PhaseOne studio in Sydney is by far one of my favourite studios to work in; It is the good ‘ol warehouse style without any massive windows or natural light sources, which is perfect should you want to construct a good LX-setup.
I worked with one model yesterday; the very talented Miss Bernie Quinn, a young very talented Jazz singer who also happens to be a good friend of mine.
We had a good six hours of casual fun with various outfits, set-ups and creative brainstorming sessions and during the next week you will be able to see some of the shots on this blog with comments and information about the set-up and gear used.
As part of the user interaction of this page I would like to invite you to submit YOUR requests and wishes of what you want to read about here on this blog.
I do now have more than 3000 unique visits each week which is more than I could ever have dreamed of five months ago when I decided to close down Photorism and dedicate my work to this blog instead. This is why I ask YOU for help now!
Tell me what is important to YOU and what would make it even more interesting for you to interact and participate on here.
Submit your ideas and wishes to me either via TWITTER, by commenting on this post or via email (post@MortenLindholm.com)
The word is YOURS! (All ideas will be posted here on the blog – spam will be deleted)
Thanks for your input
Kind Regards
Morts
PS. Photo does not have anything to do with this post, I just like it!
For most photographers a handful of strobes and a smaller selection of modifiers are more than enough to create absolutely spectacular results, whether in the studio or on location. For Yuri Arcurs too much is never enough.
Being the worlds leading stock-photographer, Yuri has personally been in charge of designing and setting up his brand new photo studio in his home country of Denmark.
In this video he gives us the grand tour of his studio, which will make any photographer green of envy.
to read more about Yuri’s work take a look at his web-universe here.
