My Sunday Series on Outdoor Portraits remains remains on hiatus as I consider changing this day’s theme to Available Light Portraiture, which is what today’s post is all about and features Tia, my first real muse, with just a little help from a speedlight.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Can you shoot a high key portrait with a speedlight? I found it was possible to make a high key portrait of my former muse—Tia Stoneman—using a speedlight for today’s featured image.
By the way, I’m still looking for a new muse. If you know anyone who might interested in posing for images for this blog, have them email me though the Contact tab directly above right.
And Using Exposure Compensation…
One of my favorite features on DSLRs or mirrorless cameras is the exposure compensation control that lets you increase or decrease the camera’s selected exposure settings to fine tune an image’s overall exposure. Compensation can be positive (additional exposure) or negative (reduced exposure) and is typically available in third- or half-stops, although some cameras offer other options. To increase or decrease exposure, you may have to push two buttons or turn a control wheel but sometimes it’s just a button that’s sitting right on top the camera.
Some DSLRs or mirrorless cameras also offer a flash exposure compensation feature that’s designed to work with dedicated speedlights that are built by the same company as the camera. This feature is basically the flash version of exposure compensation that lets you adjust the output of the built-in flash or a speedlight to increase or decrease the light’s intensity to produce the kind of look you want for the final photograph.
How I made this portrait: I photographed Tia in a North-facing bay window of the kitchen of my former home. She’s basically wearing her undergarments and is wrapping herself in some swirly fabric that she brought to the shoot.
I used a Pentax K100D’s flash compensation mode to increase the amount of flash from a Pentax AF540FGZ speedlight to add enough light to give this portrait a high-key look. The lens used was a Schneider D-Xenon 50-200mm f/4-5.6 at 95mm with a final exposure of 1/125 sec at f/5.6 and ISO 800 with an exposure compensation of plus one stop to add more additional light to compliment the high key effect. I also used the Vignette Blur feature of Color Efex to add softness to the edges of the photograph.
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Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography contains tips, tools and techniques for glamour and boudoir photography and includes information on the cameras and lenses I used as well as complete exposure data for every image. New copies are available from Amazon for $29.12 with used copies starting around ten bucks, as I write this. The Kindle version is $19.99 for those readers preferring a digital format.