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.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“I like to photograph anyone before they know what their best angles are”—Richard Avedon
The techniques I wrote about in my book, Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography and that I’ve used for this genre of portraiture in the past are really simple and don’t require lots of expensive equipment; All you need is a camera and a subject. That book was published before I fell in love with mirrorless photography and my techniques have changed ever so slightly. What are the changes?
Boudoir photography or intimate portraiture is the perfect genre for mirrorless cameras, such as the Panasonic Lumix GH4 I used to make the portrait of Pam Simpson at right. They’re perfect for many reasons, starting with being able to use a camera that’s less intrusive than a large DSLR. (More on that later.)
How I Made this Portrait
Today’s featured image is from my fifteenth portrait session with Pam. Most of our shoots together were for images that would be used in lighting equipment reviews for the former print edition of Shutterbug but this particular session was designed to produce an album of photographs for her personal use that was created using the Zno Albums website and software.
At this point in our photographic relationship. I had stopped photographing Pam with DSLRs and had focused instead of using my Olympus and Panasonic Micro Four-thirds cameras and lenses. For this session Pam was photographed standing near the window seat in my home’s guest bedroom using a Panasonic Lumix GH4 with Olympus M. Zuiko 45mm f/1.8. Lighting for the portrait was from a combination of window light and a 32-inch Westcott reflector that was placed at camera right producing an exposure of 1/125 sec at f/2.5 and ISO 800. The JPEG file, made before my current RAW+JPEG regimen, was retouched and processed using Imagenomics’ Portraiture. before applying Vivenza and Color Efex plug-ins.
Size Does Matter
The mirrorless camera’s smaller size may help with its ease of mobility but this seems to be changing when you look at how mirrorless cameras from Panasonic, for instance, keep growing in size defeating the purpose of the Micro Four-thirds series’ original premise. A 25.2 megapixel Panasonic Lumix GH7, for example, weighs 1.77 lbs, while a 24,3 megapixel Nikon Z5 weights 1.49 lbs.
The biggest shooting advantage for any mirrorless system is the Electronic View Finder that lets you see the image at the moment of capture. You don’t have to flip the camera around and chimp, breaking the rhythm of the shoot. Instead, it’s right there in the EVF and you can see it without removing your eye from the camera. You won’t miss any blinks and you’ll be able to instantly re-shoot, because you can see it right away, something you can’t do with a DSLR.
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My book Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography is full of tips, tools and techniques for glamour and boudoir photography with new copies available from Amazon for $27.58, as I write this. Used copies are starting at the hard-to-beat price price of $9.91 and the Kindle version is $19.99 for those who prefer a digital format.