Studio Portraits

I always thought when I started out that portraits would be my thing.  I had taught studio lighting a great deal, and it is really enjoyable trying to “capture” a subject’s personality in one shot – or more importantly these days, provide an image of them that will help them sell themselves through their own websites, or CVs or LinkedIn profiles.  Last month I had a couple of very enjoyable subjects.  One is a very good friend (and the designer of my brilliant website), Ash.

He wanted a photograph for business use – so I decided we should have a reference to his computer in the shot.  He is a pretty easy person to photograph – comfortable in front of the camera.

The other was Will.  Will is an actor (and has been in some pretty impressive films – such as Braveheart etc)  Will needed an updated image for his Agent and to go into the casting magazines.  We tried a couple of things.

I used my brick wall to add some texture, and replicated a window light using a mirror and some tape to bounce the flash (the featured image above), and we tried adding a prop or two with a colour shot for interest

In the end, my favoutite shot was this one – lit by my window.  I used the studio lights to act as the lights in the shot, framing his head.  I think it works well.