My Sunday Series on Available Light Portraiture continues today with an image of a model who had a profound influence on my early attempts at glamour photography—Ashley Rae. My thanks to her for all the years that we worked together.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable posing for a photographer; I was never trained. — Fala Chen
These day I have a small 11×15-foot in-home studio that’s located in the basement of my Daisy Hill home. In the not-so-distant past, I made all my glamour portraits “on location” in and around around my former home, working mostly with window light all over the house, including the kitchen! One of my other favorite spots was a small area that was located between my living and dining rooms where this portrait of Ashley Rae was made.
Here’s a Few Tips
When shooting glamour photographs on location, my best advice is not to get too fussy about how you pose the subject because one of the advantages of shooting in the real world is there is that there is always something physical for her to react to. To get started, I like to do is watch how the subject moves naturally and have them use those moves to interact with the background in a way that’s comfortable for them.
One technique I use is to show a subject how and where I want her to stand or sit is to put myself in that pose but let her give me her interpretation of it, which is almost always much better than what I showed her. Once she’s in a pose, I select the camera angle and focal length to accent their best features and minimize anything she may be self-conscious about—even if she may be wrong about that assessment.
One of the best ways I’ve found to encourage communications during a glamour shoot is by showing the subject some of the images we’re shooting on the camera’s LCD screen as we work together. I don’t show them every shot, just the ones I like the best. Most models respond positively to this but for some subjects it can break their concentration and you have to start that sequence over again. If this happens, don’t show them any photos until your finished with a specific pose or clothing change. When this technique does work, and that’s most of the time, seeing how great she looks gives her confidence in your abilities and makes the session progress smoother, producing better portraits.
How I made this portrait: This window light portrait features the wonderful Ashley Rae, who might just have been my first muse*, although I didn’t realize it at the time. The window was located in the back door of my former home at camera right. I moved her slightly away from the window to avoid blown out highlights, although deep shadows remain. During this session, we explored various versions of this pose, closer or farther away from the window but when she leaned on one of the dining room’s chairs I know this was it. The camera used was a Canon EOS 10D with the ubiquitous, for me at the time, EF 28-105mm 3.5-4.5 II lens at 65mm with an exposure of 1/80 sec at f/4.5 and ISO 400 with a minus two-thirds stop exposure compensation .
*If you have a friend or maybe yourself who would like to be a muse and has any questions or want to schedule an interview, please click the Contact button or send me an e-mail at joefarace at gmail dot com.
Note for my Patreon Subscribers. After looking at all the images that I made with Ashley Rae, I realized I could produce a Bonus post for one of my uncensored Password Protected posts using some of the other images that I’ve made of her. If you are interested in seeing some of the other photographs from this session and other sessions with Ashley Rae, click CONTACT and let me know. If you are not currently a Patreon subscriber—it’s surprisingly inexpensive—details on how to sign up can be found here.