Fiona

petemc · 08-02-2008, 19:05

Had a really lovely shoot yesterday. A girl who wanted head shots. I'm still new to portraits so of course I was a bit nervous. I know when to document a moment, but not quite how to position a person correctly. She didn't really have an idea of what she wanted, just shots to make her look good. Tricky because its certainly easier to have tear sheets with me so I can say "lets try this pose" and such. So I was completely winging it. She did pick up on that after an hour of me positioning her in the same way at each spot, but she was cool about it. As long as the shots were working she was happy to go with that. I need more experience with this so I can relax more and let the ideas flow. Its easy shooting a landscape because I'm not shy around trees. Shyness + lack of experience = performance issues (ahem)

But still it was a nice afternoon out. She was really fun and not shy as a person so I was able to chat to her and have a laugh. Its totally the key. Have a laugh, get good photos. I think I'm going to be a little stuck when I work with someone shyer than myself. Bridge I'll cross later.

I used a combination of flash (430ex with lightsphere diffuser) and natural light. Over the past year I've learnt alot about photographing people. So much that I stopped using colour, and by the end of the year I was convinced that natural light was the way forward. I took my flash just in case really. The light wasn't bad, but not great and her eyes were turning to black without catchlights. So I used the flash. It seemed to be working. I kept alternating as I prefer natural light. When I got home and looked through the images there was a clear difference. The flash shots were a bit harsh. Sure I had catchlights but at the expense of tones. To put it another way it seemed to remove natural beauty </emo>. But thats the simplest way to put it. It was like some hideous makeup that made her hair iffy and skin just not as nice. So thats totally convinced me to dump my flash. I'm going to invest in a reflector and bounce natural light. Its so much nicer.

The other thing is that this girl had great red hair. Annoying for me as I love B&W and I wanted to capture that. Until last night I didn't have a colour portrait preset in Lightroom. So I drew inspiration from Cinnamon on Flickr. She has a lovely way of processing her images so they look like film. I wanted that. I had a play in LR and got something I liked.

Best thing was that she enjoyed the shoot so yey

After I bumped into another girl I photographed and we got talking. She said I didn't seem at all shy and preferred me to the photographer who took her photo the other day. I was just so happy that people thought I was good at portraits, at making people feel relaxed. 0 pressure photographing a building or landscape. Lots trying to make someone you just met look amazing. At least there is in my head

So just a good day, and then once I managed to process colour shots to look good and do her justice, win

08-02-2008, 19:05	#1
petemc Moonshine Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Nr Liverpewl Posts: 4,371	Fiona Had a really lovely shoot yesterday. A girl who wanted head shots. I'm still new to portraits so of course I was a bit nervous. I know when to document a moment, but not quite how to position a person correctly. She didn't really have an idea of what she wanted, just shots to make her look good. Tricky because its certainly easier to have tear sheets with me so I can say "lets try this pose" and such. So I was completely winging it. She did pick up on that after an hour of me positioning her in the same way at each spot, but she was cool about it. As long as the shots were working she was happy to go with that. I need more experience with this so I can relax more and let the ideas flow. Its easy shooting a landscape because I'm not shy around trees. Shyness + lack of experience = performance issues (ahem) But still it was a nice afternoon out. She was really fun and not shy as a person so I was able to chat to her and have a laugh. Its totally the key. Have a laugh, get good photos. I think I'm going to be a little stuck when I work with someone shyer than myself. Bridge I'll cross later. I used a combination of flash (430ex with lightsphere diffuser) and natural light. Over the past year I've learnt alot about photographing people. So much that I stopped using colour, and by the end of the year I was convinced that natural light was the way forward. I took my flash just in case really. The light wasn't bad, but not great and her eyes were turning to black without catchlights. So I used the flash. It seemed to be working. I kept alternating as I prefer natural light. When I got home and looked through the images there was a clear difference. The flash shots were a bit harsh. Sure I had catchlights but at the expense of tones. To put it another way it seemed to remove natural beauty </emo>. But thats the simplest way to put it. It was like some hideous makeup that made her hair iffy and skin just not as nice. So thats totally convinced me to dump my flash. I'm going to invest in a reflector and bounce natural light. Its so much nicer. The other thing is that this girl had great red hair. Annoying for me as I love B&W and I wanted to capture that. Until last night I didn't have a colour portrait preset in Lightroom. So I drew inspiration from Cinnamon on Flickr. She has a lovely way of processing her images so they look like film. I wanted that. I had a play in LR and got something I liked. Best thing was that she enjoyed the shoot so yey After I bumped into another girl I photographed and we got talking. She said I didn't seem at all shy and preferred me to the photographer who took her photo the other day. I was just so happy that people thought I was good at portraits, at making people feel relaxed. 0 pressure photographing a building or landscape. Lots trying to make someone you just met look amazing. At least there is in my head So just a good day, and then once I managed to process colour shots to look good and do her justice, win __________________ Thats no hamster, its a space station!