I’ll be at Denver Pro Photo sometime this morning because KEH will be there buying cameras and I will be selling a few of my Micro Four-thirds cameras. I hope to see some of you there too. Even though I will be “thinning the herd,” I’ll still have five Panasonic Lumix mirrorless cameras and four (real) Olympus cameras. including my beloved Pen F. In the future, I may be getting another DSLR, mirrorless or film cameras as I contemplate making some big (photographic) changes in the future. I’ll let you know. And now…
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
If you feel glamorous, you definitely look glamorous. — Scarlett Johansson
You might be interested in giving glamour photography a try but think it’s difficult requiring lots of expensive equipment but the truth is all you really need is a camera, some kind of lighting and a subject. I’ve covered the topic of “Where to Find Glamour Models” here many times but the pandemic has turned the on-line modeling scene on it’s head. You can read that in this post I made that post a few years ago and I need to update it. If I do, look for a new post on an upcoming #glamourthursday.
The Cameras: Ever since my friend Mark Toal introduced me to the Panasonic Lumix system—I can’t believe it—eleven years ago, I’ve been using Micro Four-thirds cameras for all my studio portraits, I’ve also embraced Olympus cameras and lenses and use a mix-and-match approach for my mirrorless photography. I haven’t tried anything from the new OM Systems yet, but maybe will in the future. I expect the performance to be at least as good as my existing Olympus gear. No matter what they call the company, Olympus always produced superb optics.
During a glamour portrait session one real advantage of using a Micro Four-thirds camera, or any mirrorless camera for that matter, with their electronic viewfinders, becomes immediately apparent. When you click the shutter, the image you just made is immediately visible in the viewfinder. You don’t have to remove the camera from your eye and “chimp.” You see the photograph right away, which means you can see blinks and make refinements in the subject’s pose, lightning or exposure faster, all of which makes the shoot go smoother, usually producing better results too
About the Model: Over the years I have been really lucky to photograph some amazing women, including today’s featured model—Scarlet Ana. I first photographed her seven years ago; you can see an image from that shoot here. Recently I was fortunate to photograph her again for both the #corsetmonday series and the upcoming #seethrough series that I previewed here. Look for more images from that shoot in both series real soon now. We also made some more traditional glamour photographs during that session that were infused with the wonderful combination of Scarlet’s style, class and posing skills and my (whatever you want to call it) ability to capture those moments of supreme glamour and sexiness.
How I Made this Portrait: Some models project a sexy vibe and this shows in the what they choose to wear and the poses they come up with, while others have their own style.
The lighting setup for this portrait of Scarlet Ana consisted of two Paul C Buff DigiBee DB800’s monolights and one Alien Bee B800 monolight. A DigiBee DB800 was placed at camera right and was fairly close to her. It had a 37x27x12inch Plume Ltd. Wafer soft box attached. An Alien Bee B800 with an 16 x 30-inch Westcott Apollo Strip soft box mounted was located at camera left. Another DigiBee DB800 with a Paul C Buff 18-OMNI Reflector attached, softened by a triple-layer Diffusion Sock, was located at camera left and placed neat the back corner of my home studio. They were synced with the camera using a set of Pocket Wizard PlusX flash triggers.
The camera used was a Panasonic Lumix GH4 with a Lumix G Vario 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 lens (at 23mm) with an exposure of 1/125 sec at f/11 and ISO 200. The background was a hand painted Carbonite muslin from Silverlake Photo. This is a full-frame, uncropped (18 x 13.5 mm) image of the RAW file that was captured by the camera. The RAW file was lightly retouched, color balanced tweaked with PictoColor iCorrect Portrait and layered with the Glamour Glow filter from Color Efex to produce what you see today.
If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to buy Joe a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.50), click here. And if you do, thanks so much.
My book Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography is full of tips, tools and techniques for glamour and boudoir photography with new copies available from Amazon for $33.85, as I write this. Used copies start at around twenty-three bucks and the Kindle version is only $19.99 for those who prefer a digital format.