I hadn’t done a portrait session for a while and luckily my friend Edy was up for trying some new set ups.
The first set up was inspired by a photographer I really admire, Jerry Ghionis. It is a very dramatic portrait of a young lady.
In my collaborations with people in music and the entertainment business, I learned that many of them like dramatic portraits and lighting, so I believed it would be a good idea to add this kind of lighting set up to my repertoire.
I started the session with Edy with that set up because I (foolishly) thought it would be relatively straightforward to recreate. It turned out that the light placement is quite tricky, especially with speedlights (no modelling light). I suspect Jerry Ghionis’ picture that inspired me was taken with a continuous light source (either natural light or his Ice light).
After quite a bit of trial and error, we got some good shots in the bag. I was very pleased with them and so was Edy.
We then moved on to a more traditional set up against a dark background. Two lights, one speedlight in a soft box camera right and a bare speedlight camera left and slightly behind the model to provide separation with the background.
I really look forward to doing more projects like this in the future.
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