My Sunday Series on Outdoor Portraits remains on hiatus as I consider changing this day’s theme to Available Light Portraiture, which is what today’s post is about. Like last Sunday, this post also takes a look at one of the models who hasn’t appeared on this blog as often as others. In this case it’s Kelsey who I only photographed once but was selected (by the editors) to appear on the cover of my book Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
A lot of photographers think that if they buy a better camera they’ll be able to take better photographs. A better camera won’t do a thing for you if you don’t have anything in your head or in your heart.—Arnold Newman
After Mary and I sold our studio, I didn’t have access to a standalone studio. In the intervening 14 years we’ve lived on Daisy Hill, I built a small home studio located in the finished basement of my house.
A Studio Is Where You Find It
In the not-so-distant past, I made all my portraits on location, in the unfinished basement of my former house or in and around the house itself.
When photographers look at some of the homegrown portraits I shot in my former home and sometimes in my current, they ask, “How big is your house?” The truth is that my former home, where I made many of the images found in my last four books was a small house that was located in a working class neighborhood. My current one is close to the 2233 sq ft that, according to the Census Bureau, is the current average house size.
Living in Colorado, it gets cold in the winter and sometimes it snows, lots of snow. If I lived in Florida I might have a different way of choosing shooting locations but for much of the year I shoot most of my portrait and glamour images in my 11×15-foot (3×4.5m) home studio. Although that seems to be be slowly changing as I gravitate to more location photography and may change for the rest of 2025 and beyond. You’ll see it all happen here in near-real time.
All of this is why I believe you can make portraits and glamour photographs anywhere by making the most of what you have. Instead of complaining that you don’t have a studio, use your imagination.
How I Made this Portrait: That;s why my suggestion is to look for indoor locations where the best light can be found. While it seems obvious, many images are shot in locations where the photographer or subject decide to make it without consideration for the lighting conditions. This may (or may not) work for outdoor locations but for indoor portraits you really need place your subject where the light is best. You should also shoot these kinds of portraits at wider apertures to soften and blur the background focusing attention on your subject and minimizing the inevitable clutter that comes with shooting in a lived-in space.
In my former home, one of my favorite place to shoot portraits was the dining room that had a door that opened onto the patio and had an almost full length window built into it. That’s where I liked to shoot window-light images, many of which you’ve seen on this blog. The light could be modulated by opening and closing mini-blinds that were attached to the door. You may have a similar space in your home, and never thought a particular location would be a great place to make a portrait or two but may be just what you need.
Kelsie was a model that was refereed to me by a modeling agency and like many of these referrals was a “one and done” shoot, although I would have loved to photograph her again, even now! This portrait of her was captured in the dining room (the table is just out of camera range to the left of her) of my former home with available light coming from a window in a door at camera right with a Westcott reflector placed at camera left for fill. The camera used was a Canon EOS 1D Mark IIN and Zeiss Planar T* 50mm f/1.4 ZE lens. The available light exposure was 1/250 sec at f/3.2 and ISO 400. The original JPEG image was lightly retouched and enhanced with Vivenza before adding the Glamour Glow filter that’s part of Color Efex.
Kelsey appears on the cover of my book, Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography, which is full of tips, tools and techniques for glamour and boudoir photography and includes information on the cameras and lenses used as well as the complete exposure data for each image. New copies are available from Amazon for $30.54 with used copies starting around ten bucks as I write this. The Kindle version is $19.99 for those preferring a digital forma