Tangents

on-location portraits – the progression of an idea

August 26, 2010

on-location portraits – the progression of an idea

I had the pleasure of photographing musician Anne Drummond for her promotional portfolio. (I also happen to be photographing her upcoming wedding.) The photo above is one in a progressive sequence of images, moving towards a final few photographs that will work in this setting here …

Where it started was when my assistant-with-an-attitood, Jessica, noticed this doorway to a nightclub. The lighting inside looked interesting, but posing Anne in front of it, didn’t quite work out. Here’s the test shot which showed that the interior was much darker than the exterior. Off-camera speedlight in a softbox was used here for gentle fill-flash, to open the light on Anne’s face.

settings: 1/160 @ f3.5 @ 800 ISO … 70-200mm at 150mm

Then Jessica schmoozed our way into the club entrance, by batting her eyelashes at the club manager.

I was hoping that the incandescent lighting inside would be even and bright enough for some hand-held available light portraits. However, this (under-exposed) test shot showed that the light on Anne’s eyes would be too uneven.

settings: 1/160 @ f3.2 @ 1250 ISO … 24-70mm at 24mm

Time to bring in the softbox again. I gelled the flash on the softbox with a 1/2 CTS gel, to bring the color temperature of the flash closer to the color of the incandescent lighting. (This makes the flash’s light less blue in comparison to the incandescent / tungsten light.) And the image immediately worked. Just beautiful!

settings: 1/30 @ f3.5 @ 1000 ISO … 24-70mm lens

Turning around and shooting towards the club’s entrance also looked interesting. I kept the gel on the flash to force the ambient light outside to be blue in comparison to the flash’s color temperature.

settings: 1/30 @ f3.5 @ 1000 ISO … 24-70mm lens

A few more photographs from the rest of the session:

The following two photographs are interesting perhaps in that they were taken at exactly the same spot.

The top photograph was shot using the softbox. The light is mostly from the speedlight, with little ambient light registering.

1/160 @ f3.5 @ 800 ISO … 70-200mm at 70mm

With this next photograph (below), I had asked Anne to stand away from the door, and then I just used the available light. The use of light is exactly as described in this previous article.

1/80 @ f2.8 @ 800 ISO … 70-200mm at 150mm

Two more photographs using the softbox for light …

… and another two photographs using just the available light.

Hopefully this gives some insight in working with the available light, or working with flash and a softbox … easily flipping between the two ways of using light with a portrait shoot on location.

Equipment used during this photo session:
Nikon D3; Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 AF-S (B&H);
Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 AF-S II (B&H); Nikon SB-900 (B&H);
Lastolite EZYBOX 24×24 softbox (B&H); Nikon SD-9 battery pack (B&H)
Manfrotto 680B monopod (B&H);
brass stud to attach softbox to monopod (B&H)

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29 Comments »

The gorgeous results speak for themselves. A clear concise explanation that makes perfect sense. It’s articles like this that make Planet Neil must read material.

Thank you.

Comment by Tom K. — August 26, 2010 @ 1:06 pm
Some time ago, I read somewhere that it isn’t a good idea for the model to wear sleave-less clothing; the stated reason for that was that there is “too much skin” in the portrait and that it distracts the viewer from paying attention to the face. It’s interesting to see that that particular shirt worked just fine in this session. I wonder why is that possible, because the article which discouraged such clothing was accompanied by sample images, and the naked arms were indeed distracting in that book. Perhaps it’s because of the choice of rather dark background in Neil’s session?

I know that rules are supposed to be bendable, but the accompanying photos were *so* persuading at that time…

Comment by jkt — August 26, 2010 @ 1:25 pm
jkt .. I’m better guided by what looks good in my viewfinder, than adhering to specific rules. For this shoot, I had given Anne no instruction about what to wear. Since it was for promotional photos of herself, I left hair and make-up and dress entirely up to her.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — August 26, 2010 @ 2:00 pm
I would like to thank you for your best guidance.

I live in Paris, and i would like to ask you, when will you translate you book photography in French language.

Now i photography with a canon 7D and a softbox and TTL flash, the résult is very great.Icontrol now the hight speed syncro.

I follow your advice since last year and since the begenning i made a lot progres.

Thank a lot

Marius from PARIS

Comment by Marius — August 26, 2010 @ 4:17 pm
Marius … I’ll check with the publisher about the possibility of a French translation of the book. Thanks.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — August 26, 2010 @ 4:59 pm
Neil. When you are metering for the low key images where the background is very dark and the subject is wearing a black coat and top and the brightest tone is the face, the meter is likely to over expose as it tries to make all that black neutral gray. How do you chimp the exposure when there is no white to do the blinkies and Histogram below 256. Do you go the other way by keeping the blacks above 0 on the histogram or the skin at the end of the third quadrant of the Nikon histogram? Obviously we don’t want to overexpose the skin and want detail in the black coat as you have deftly done here. Could you please explain your thinking.
Thank you soooo much.

Comment by Gene Lobb — August 26, 2010 @ 5:58 pm
Gene .. when using TTL flash (which can’t be metered in the traditional way with a flash meter), then I have to rely on:
– anticipating the amount of FEC that I need to dial in, based on the tonality of the scene and subject
– look at the camera’s preview display and eyeball the image and figure out how much FE I need to dial in. I know this method pains the more traditional photographers who want to do it ‘properly’, but it works. I get results, and can shoot fast. No drama about having to work according a certain “correct” methodology.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — August 26, 2010 @ 6:02 pm
Neil,
Did you return to the Meatpacking district? I see a repeating pattern that looks familiar in the photo, second from the bottom. :-)

For this photo (http://neilvn.com/tangents/images/models/anne-d/Anne-D-272.jpg) where Anne’s back is towards the outside, your WB is still set to around 3800K to match the 1/2 CTS gel, even though you are now mixing it up with a large amount of ambient light?

Comment by Stephen — August 26, 2010 @ 6:07 pm
Yup .. my WB is still set for my dominant light source, which in this case is the 1/2 CTS gelled flash. That would make it around 3700K.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — August 26, 2010 @ 6:35 pm
Neil, these shots are fantastic, and I’ve enjoyed seeing your thought process in the last few posts. In trying to understand the wonderfully soft available light shots, I can’t help but ask what the weather conditions were and time of day.

Thanks!

Comment by Lee — August 26, 2010 @ 6:45 pm
Lee .. it was indeed a rainy over-cast day. But even then, we need to work with directional light to get the best results. Just because the light is soft and surrounds everything, doesn’t make it good light.

For example, look at the comparison photos here where I posted the photos where no off-camera flash was used. The light is soft .. but not good. It needs direction to really work.

Here is another explanation of how I would position my subject in order to get soft directional light.

This approach is applied then even on rainy or overcast days, by positioning my subject so that there is directional light falling on them.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — August 26, 2010 @ 8:11 pm
Curious, were you using ttl or manual flash and if ttl what were you using for triggers.

Lastly, the way you used the ambient in the first photo as a hair light/cross light really made that shot stand out. i wish I had your eye for this stuff.

Comment by Jeff — August 26, 2010 @ 9:35 pm
Jeff, where I used the off-camera softbox here, I used wireless TTL flash. The on-camera Master flash had its output disabled, and just triggered the Slave flash in the softbox. Identical to how I used this method on a number of other shoots.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — August 26, 2010 @ 11:15 pm
first of all I want to thank you for the lecture at B&H,it was amazing, thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. I have one question, I’d seen that you use a softbox but not a stand but a boom arm, you do it for portability? and if you use it that way you still have to get a permit from the city to shoot or you have no problems.I hope my question is clear enough.

Comment by Hanssel Galeano — August 27, 2010 @ 1:02 am
Hi there Hanssel .. thank you! I’m glad you enjoyed the lecture.

Re the photo shoot, it isn’t a boom per se. It is a monopod that my assistant is holding up, exactly as shown in the image in this previous article on over-powering the sun with flash.

No permit is required if you don’t use a tripod or light-stand.
That’s from the Mayor’s Office.

That is exactly why we move fast with a hand-held monopod and softbox. It also helps keep the photo session moving, and not have us get stuck in one spot, whether physically or artistically.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — August 27, 2010 @ 2:27 am
Hi Neil, for the softbox light as Fill is there the same approach regarding FEC (-3 to -2 i.e.) as you described in your book ? Or for the softbox fill there are different setting which work for you. I think that softbox can eat some light trought the diffusion panel and the FEC should be more toward zero mark, but I’m not sure. Thanks a lot.

Comment by Roman — August 27, 2010 @ 4:06 am
Roman .. the approach is exactly the same. In theory you don’t need to adjust your FEC if you bounce flash or use a diffuser of some kind.

So for fill light, I’d still be in the region of -3 or -2EV.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — August 27, 2010 @ 2:35 pm
Neil,
Vale a pena passar por aqui todos os dias.
A cada post uma grande dica.
Meu muito obrigado
Ricardo Carvalho
Abraço
Ilha Grande – Piauí – Brasil

Comment by Ricardo Carvalho — August 27, 2010 @ 4:45 pm
Neil
You mostly say that you prefer a faster shutter speed, but in some of the images above it is 1/30, any specific reasons other than picking the ambient light ?
Thanks for another useful article.
-MP

Comment by MP Singh — August 27, 2010 @ 4:45 pm
MP .. since the images are intended for promotional use, I didn’t want to push the ISO too high. So I had to bring the shutter speed down.

No dogma about choice of shutter speed. It is whatever it needs to be, to get the best image.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — August 27, 2010 @ 4:54 pm
thank you for your answer, I bought a softbox yesterday and now I’ll go outside and take pictures knowing that as long as I have handheld equipment I don’t need a permit from the city. By the way, when I return from your lecture I tried the TTL flash and manual camera as you said and I was impressed how easy was to take pictures that way, I used to use manual flash because it was confusing for me to use TTL but after yesterday I’m a complete new photographer, thank you very much.

Comment by hanssel — August 27, 2010 @ 5:54 pm
Neil

I just came across this website a couple of days back. I am a great follower of DAvid Hobby and i find your website and blog also equally good. This post is an excellent inspiration for budding photogs like me.

What was your whitebalance settings on the camera for your shoot? Especially the sitting pose. Was your camera dialed to Tungsten and with the CTO on.

I like your comment on”Rules are to be broken”. We normally tend to be perfect and follow rules. That need not come in the way of Art or creative art.

Thanks
Suresh

Comment by Suresh — August 27, 2010 @ 7:24 pm
Thanks! That’s a great compliment indeed.

My WB is set to my predominant light source .. in this case here i used 1/2 CTS, I set my WB to 3700K … but will touch it up in post-processing of my RAW images. Check my comment #9 here. Also check this previous article about gelling flash for tungsten.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — August 28, 2010 @ 2:12 pm
Neil, I have to say that I think this particular post in addition to the August 6th edition are among the best and most informative that you have posted. I enjoy seeing your mind work out the solutions to these lighting scenarios! Thank you.

Comment by Jason — August 29, 2010 @ 5:21 pm
Jason .. thanks. From the feedback to the newsletter, and comments here, it is clear that the ‘sequence’ type posts are popular. So I will make sure to write more of those in the future.

It is also a direction I *have* to take with new material for the Tangents blog. We can only talk so much about shutter speeds and apertures, and then we’ve covered the subject entirely.

And along the lines of my one lecture, “Just Give Me The F-Stop”, the actual numerical value of the aperture isn’t all that relevant most of the times …. what IS important is the method. The thought process. So that will definitely be a new fresher direction to take the material here.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — August 30, 2010 @ 2:22 pm
Love seeing the sequence. Amazing images! So difficult to pick a favorite but I really love the last two! Always an inspiration. Thanks for sharing your knowledge – Your seminar at B & H was awesome. Tried your technique on a still life. Worked quite well – I need to practice.

Comment by Kathy Marciante Photograhy — September 2, 2010 @ 7:34 pm
Just got caught up on the last 4 or 5 Tangents… I love coming back to the Tangents to get inspired. Thanks Neil! (now if I only had time to finish your book!…)

Comment by Robb Mac — September 10, 2010 @ 10:00 am
Neil, Thanks for your blog and excelente instructional posts.
I live and work in Brasil, as a wedding photografer.
I love your technic, but I want to ask some aditicional question to you.
How you work with WB in your shots? Especial with insede shots.
I just have buy an Nikon D3s. Is is amazing.
Using a 1/2 CT gel filter in your SB900, how is your configuration to WB in you D3 to shoot inside a Hotel Saloon whit incandescent lights?
Thanks You for attention.
John – Rio/BR

Comment by John Kirchhofer — October 17, 2010 @ 5:36 pm
John, it is essential that you shoot in RAW, for this makes WB correction a breeze. With incandescent lights, I gel my flash for Tungsten, either with 1/2 CTS or full CTS. I then change my WB to either 3700K or Tungsten WB preset. But I do need to shoot in RAW so that any color cast is easy to edit out.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — November 5, 2010 @ 2:01 am