After a rambunctious post about outdoor portraits last Sunday, that theme remains on hiatus—unless you want me to change that—as I consider keeping this day’s theme as Available Light Portraiture, which is what today’s post is about featuring one of my favorite models, the legendary Maria Cedar.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
We have an inner window through which we can see the world, and though it gets cloudy in life, it’s our job to wipe it clean and see things as they really are.—Sebastian Koch
It doesn’t matter what person, place or thing you’re photographing, the ultimate subject of any photograph is light and it’s the quality of the light that ultimately determines the effectiveness of the image, in this case, it’s a portrait of Maria.
It’s Almost Always Available
As I contemplate shutting down my in-home studio (you can read my thoughts on this topic here), here are a few reasons why I’ve always liked shooting glamour using available light:
It’s free. There’s no lighting equipment to purchase, set up, plug in or chew through batteries. You can make photographs outdoors using natural light or indoors using window light and all you need is a camera and a subject. You can supplement the available light with an inexpensive reflector or make one using a piece of foam core.- It’s easy. You can easily see the light falling on the model and won’t have to guess about lighting ratios or worry about moving lights around or dealing with (or falling over) lightstands, hair lights or booms. That also means there’s no bulky gear to pack into your car.
- It’s fast. Instead of wasting time fussing with lighting equipment, the subject will be relaxed and you’ll be less distracted allowing you to make better portraits. You can work faster with the subject getting more as well as better photographs.
How I Made This Shot: One of the most basic forms of available light for glamour photography is window light. This image was captured using only the light from a pair of South West-facing windows in the living room of my current home. The model, the spectacular Internet model Maria Cedar, was posed between the windows at camera left and a sofa at right. The camera used was an entry-level Olympus E-M10 Mark I with Olympus M.45mm F1.8,one of my go-to lenses for available light portraits. The exposure was 1/60 sec at f/1.8 and ISO 400 with a plus one-third stop exposure compensation.
The .ORF (RAW) file was processed using Adobe Camera RAW and was initially converted to monochrome with Exposure Software’s Exposure. That was my approach when originally posting glamour portraits on social media because I was afraid of Internet censors and nanny software. In recent months, I stopped being afraid and have been posting images what I feel were more honest and so this post features a color version. The final touch was adding a bit of softness from the Glamour Glow filter found in Color Efex.
Note for my Patreon Subscribers. After looking at all of the images in this series, I realized could create a Bonus post using some of them for an uncensored Password Protected post. If you are interested in seeing some of the other images from this session with Maria, click CONTACT and let me know. If you are not yet a Patreon subscriber—it’s surprisingly inexpensive—details on how to sign up can be found here.