My Sunday Series on Available Light Portraiture continues today with a portrait of Megan that was captured in the living room of my former home using window light from a narrow South-facing bay window.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
First a disclaimer: This is a CliffsNotes version of some of my approaches to photographing models and is not an comprehensive look at all my techniques; Today’s post is just some of my thoughts that may help get you started in photographing models. The series of four books I wrote about photographing women contain more than 100,000 words on this subject. If you’re interested, click on the Books section for details and links to purchase them from Amazon. The prices may be different from what’s shown because Amazon keeps changing them and their availability. I have no control over this and some may only be available used, at this time.
The Pose Can Make All The Difference
Over the years, I’ve found there are two types of models. Some are Inner Directed while others are Outer Directed. You can read my thoughts on these two types of portrait subjects in this post. For an update: What I didn’t realize at the time when writing that original post is there are variations on these types. Megan, who’s featured today, for example, is an inner directed model but one who uses a thoughtful approach where she slowly moves from pose to pose allowing me to tweak each pose, if I want to, much as I might do with an outer-directed model but at a much slower pace.
How do I learn this stuff about any model? It’s simple, I ask her some time after signing the model release and while we’re selecting wardrobe. I’ll ask how she prefers to work: Would she like me to tell her what to do or would she prefer to “do her own thing.” Then we discus how we’ll work together in the studio to accomplish our goals. Agreeing on how you’ll work together, ahead of time, makes the session and posing process go smother and produces better photographs and happier models who will want to work with you again. I also watch her and how she moves, often showing me potential poses while just being herself.
Sometime a pose works; sometime it doesn’t. All models are different and what looks perfect for one subject won’t always work with another model. Camera angle and lens focal length can also have an effect on how a pose looks along with camera placement itself. Ansel Adams once famously said that the difference between a good picture and a bad one was “knowing where to stand.” The main takeaway from all this is that any failed pose is more often the fault of the photographer, not necessarily the subject.
During a typical two-hour photo session, I’ll have the model make four to six wardrobe changes and usually shoot 200-300 images, depending on how well the session goes. I capture the portraits as RAW+JPEG files and use the RAW files to make the final images for publication or display on-line. At the end of the session, I give the model all of the JPEG files that we make during the session as I explained in my post Proofing & TFP: How I Do It.
How I made this portrait: I photographed Megan in the living room of my former home. The final JPEG file was underexposed and you can see the SOOC file in the upper right. It was somewhat rescued using techniques that I explain here. although it was still somewhat noisy even after applying Dfine. At the time, I didn’t embrace RAW capture but nowadays shoot RAW+JPEG during all portrait shoots. The camera used was a six-megapixel Canon EOS D60 with EF 22-55mm f/4-5.6 USM EF lens with an exposure of 1/100 sec at f/7.1 and ISO 400. I added soft focus from the Glamour Glow filter that’s part of Color Efex. to hide (soften) some of the noise.
Some other thoughts on available light portraiture: You don’t need a studio or even lots of room to produce effective portraits because, in addition to window light, we all have access to the outdoors. Working outdoors can be fun but introduces a bunch of variables that you can’t control starting with the weather, wind and sometimes even bugs. After just a few shots of a model at Barr Lake, for example, she had had enough of the ants crawling on her and believe me it’s hard to photograph anybody when they’re jumping up and down while being assaulted by creepy-crawlies.
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If you’re interested in learning how I use cameras, lenses and lighting in my in-home studio and on location, please pick up a copy of Studio Lighting Anywhere which is available used from Amazon.com for around eleven bucks, as I write this. The Kindle version is $19.99 for those preferring a digital format.