Posts tagged Setup
Breaking Down the Shot – Shooting on a Sunny Day
0This is the inaugural post of a new series of articles that I hope provides a more in-depth look at my work.
I recently did a portrait session with Jeanne who is editor of Benicia Magazine. Benicia was once the capitol of California and with the Capitol Building still intact, it made a great backdrop. The challenge I faced was shooting Jeanne in front of the capitol building in broad day light with no shade in sight while creating a magazine worthy image.
To make this image work, I had to make Jeanne really “pop” in front of the capitol building. I quickly decided that the best way to setup this shot was to have the sun behind Jeanne with a speed light in front of her for fill.
To get the right exposure for the background, I took a couple shots of the capitol building as seen in the image on the left below. At 1/250, my camera’s light meter came back with f/8 but I was still getting some highlights on the white columns so I adjusted the exposure by one stop. Next came setting the correct exposure for Jeanne. I really wanted her to “pop” in this image against the building so I set my speed light to 1/2 and found a workable setting. Though the recycle times were a bit slow at 1/2, it allowed for a slower paced session making it easier to connect with Jeanne which I find makes better images. Having the sun behind Jeanne made sure there wasn’t any squinting and it also provided a bit of rim lighting for her hair.
Post production included minor editing in Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS4. If you have any questions please leave me a comment.
Behind the Scenes with Soonka
0It’s always kind of fun to not only look at photos but also see the behind the scenes as well. I usually try to remember to take a setup shot but getting a picture of me taking a picture is even better. Usually I’m on my own and I got too many things to worry about to remember to take the setup shot. Will try harder in the future though.
So you want to see the behind the scenes for this shot? Scroll down…
Here is the setup for the shot above:
A couple more tidbits from this shoot:
- This is the 1st time I’ve done an implied shoot
- This is the 2nd time I’ve shot at this warehouse, first time was with Sadmira