Today is #anythingcanhappenday on the Blog and it’s also National Bagel Day. These rounds of dough can be found in breakfast joints, coffee shops, supermarkets and vary wildly in their quality. Locally, Einstein Bros Bagels are helping fill my cravings but my heart belongs to Zaidy’s Deli & Bakery but it’s a 50-mile round trip.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“For every two minutes of glamour, there are eight hours of hard work.”—Jessica Savitch
If you’re interested in trying glamour photography but think it’s difficult and requires lots of expensive equipment, it’s not or, at least, it doesn’t have to be. All you really need to get started is a camera, a light source—even a Lightbulb can work—and someone to pose.
Last year I wrote a post about shooting glamour photographs with an admittedly expensive DSLR macro lens. Today I’m looking at an alternative in the mirrorless Macro Four-thirds system that while not necessarily inexpensive can be purchased used at an affordable price.
During a glamour portrait session you’ll quickly discover the big advantage of using a mirrorless camera— the electronic viewfinder. After 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 to see what the image you just captured looks like. You get to see that photograph right away that not only lets you check if the subject has blinked but also allows you to make refinements to the their pose, the lightning or the image’s exposure, all of which makes a shoot go smoother and ultimately produces better looking images.
How I made this portrait
Glamour photography can be shot on-location, even outdoors as an environmental portrait, but some models prefer to shoot in studio, if only for privacy reasons.
For this session with the luminescent Pam Simpson in my home studio, the lighting setup used a Godox monolight with a Westcott Apollo Strip soft box attached that was placed at camera right. The soft box’s flexible framework has an umbrella-style construction so it’s compatible with many different kinds of lights. Side lighting was provided by another Godox monolight located at camera left with its standard metal reflector in place. The backdrop was a two-sided Savage Monsoon (this is the darker side) collapsible background that was supported by a light stand.
The camera used was a Panasonic Lumix GH4 with a Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 lens, a beautiful but also somewhat pricey lens. I bought my lens used from KEH—not a sponsor—for less than half-price and suggest that, if you’re interested in giving this technique a try, you do the same thing.
This was a lens I originally tested for a magazine review and loved it so much that I felt I had to own one. There is something about the Leica 45mm f/2.8 macro lens that I love, perhaps it’s because of it’s focal length (90mm equivalent) and built-in image stabilization but also its usefulness as a portrait lens. I also own the Olympus ED 60mm f/2.8 Macro lens (120mm equivalent)—it was a refurb—and am going to try shooting the lens during my next portrait session and will let you know how it goes.
The exposure for this image was 1/125 sec and f/8 and ISO 200. The original JPEG file was retouched using Photoshop’s Clone Stamp and Healing Brush tools before being lightly enhanced with Vivenza and then layered with the Glamour Glow filter from Color Efex to add a soft focus touch.
Censorship Concerns
In the past, I liked displaying my glamour photographs on-line in black and white to produce what I convinced myself was a quiet, pensive look but also to make the photographs less prone to being censored. More recently I prefer making and posting these kinds of images in color, as with today’s featured portrait, because I think color adds a more natural and contemporary look to the portrait. But there is some self-censorship involved. For example, the image from last Sunday’s post was not featured on social media because of my concerns about censorship, although it shouldn’t have to be. That’s a question for another time and another reason why I created my Password Protected posts..
If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to treat me to a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.50), please click. 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 and includes information on all of the cameras used as well as the complete exposure data for each image. New books are available from Amazon for $20.02 with used books starting around ten bucks.as I write this. The Kindle version is $19.99 for those preferring a digital format.