When I mentioned to my wife I was having trouble coming up with a new theme for Tuesdays, she suggested “Tricky Tuesday” as a way or me to share some of the tricks, tips and techniques I’ve used over the years when shooting portrait and glamour images. Today’s post features the statuesque—she’s six feet tall—Danielle Nicole.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“Don’t get me wrong, I admire elegance and have an appreciation of the finer things in life. But to me, beauty lies in simplicity.”—Mark Hyman
The above quotation applies to all types of photography, including portraiture where it’s all too easy to set a subject on a posing stool and place them in “Pose A,” then move them into “Pose B,” making the whole process so mechanical that R2D2 could make that kind of portrait.
The goal of any pose is not just to look natural, although that’s one objective but perhaps to tell a story and there are many ways you can pursue that goal. Some photographers like to keep their posing subtle, which is my typical way of working, while others are not so restrained. It all depends on the model and the best way to describe Danielle Nicole is exuberant!. No matter how you achieve the pose, it all begins with observation, experience and, most important of all, communication with the subject.
Talking to the Subject
It’s my philosophy about portraiture that your clients wants a portrait of themselves or a loved one that looks different from the last portrait you made for another customer and one that captures that subject’s individuality. Sometimes you can achieve that goal and get by with using just one light, as the lighting (above) set-up demonstrates.
How I made this portrait: I photographed Danielle Nicole using a single LED light source with some help from a simple, inexpensive light modifier.
A Fotodiox Pro LED light was placed at camera right with a 60-inch white parabolic umbrella mounted in shoot-through mode. A 30-inch Westcott Basic 5-in-1 Sunlight reflector is at camera left serving as fill. In the setup image (above right) I first used a 5×7-foot Photo Grey Savage Infinity vinyl background to make some head shots of the model. Danielle is six-feet tall in her bare feet so when I wanted to shoot some full-length shots of her kicking up her heels, I removed the background and used the wall of my home studio as a backdrop, which, at this time, was white. It’s 18% grey or thereabouts now.
The camera used was a workhorse Canon EOS 60D with an EF-S15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM lens (at 31mm) with an exposure of 1/50 sec at f/4.55 at ISO 500 with a plus two-thirds stop exposure compensation,
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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 and Used books are available from Amazon starting around ten bucks.as I write this. Kindle version is $19.99 for those preferring a digital format.