My Sunday Series on Outdoor Portraits remains remains on hiatus as I consider changing this day’s theme to Available Light Portraiture. Today’s post features one of my favorite images of my former muse, Tia Stoneman.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“Don’t follow trends, start trends.”—Frank Capra
Tia Stoneman was my first muse and working with her over many years was one of the highlight of beginning my exploration of the glamour genre. Yesterday’s post was about what was the source of a photographer’s inspiration. I can honestly say that working with Tia was the source of one of my earliest inspirations.
The First of My Corset Monday Series.
A portrait of Tia is featured in the pages and on the back cover of my book Posing for Portrait and Glamour Photography.She and I had a remarkable five-year run together before she moved 190 miles away. We produced what, for me, were memorable images and like any muse she inspired me to create better and more interesting photographs.
I wrote a post called Following Trends: More Portraits Please where I called attention to the fact that all of the Top Posts at that time, as calculated by WordPress, were about portraiture and I set out to write more portrait and studio lighting posts. Photographs of Tia was responsible for many of those Top Rated posts.
How I made this portrait: High-key lighting is a style of photography that reduces the lighting ratio present in a scene. This was originally done partly for technological reasons, since early film could not cope with high contrast ratios but nowadays this technique is used to suggest “an upbeat mood.” The terminology comes from the higher balance in the ratio between the key light and the fill light. In the 1950s and 1960s, high-key lighting was achieved through multiple light sources in a scene but in this case it was achieved simply with just North-facing window light with some fill from a 550EX speedlite with Sto-Fen Omni Bounce diffuser attached.
Ms. Stoneman was photographed using mostly daylight coming from the Bay window in the kitchen of my former home. The camera used was a EOS 5D Mark I and the EF 85mm f/1.8 lens that I love to use for available light portrait and glamour photography. The exposure was 1/200 sec and f/3.5 and ISO 400 with a plus one stop exposure compensation.
Feedback from you is also a big help in my plans for future posts in this series. If there is any portrait-related topic or maybe model you would like to see featured, click the Contact tab above and let me know.
*If you know of any models, aspiring models or women who would be interesting in posing for me and becoming my new muse, please have them Contact me to set up a meeting and test shoot.
I really enjoyed making images of models wearing corsets for my #corsetmonday series. Use the Search feature to find some of those images. Social media, not so much, and was the beginning of my first shadow banning. That in turn was the basis of my creating the Password Protected posts where I could post totally uncensored images exclusively for my Patreon supporters.