Bernie Quinn, Jazz Singer

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!

Thanks for reading

Morts