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Headshot photography – Clam-shell lighting setup

March 15, 2016 Neil vN 10 Comments

Headshot photography - Clam-shell lighting setup

There isn't only one correct way of lighting portraits or headshots. There are numerous ways to attractively light your subject. My favorite go-to lighting setup involved the large Profoto 5' Octa Softbox, which allowed me fine control over the contrast, by having my subject move slightly forward or back, or rotating slightly. (The linked article explains more.) Using the 5' Octabox though, meant that I had to shoot around the massive light modifier. A simpler way of shooting, which allows me slightly more freedom in how I moved,  Read more inside...

Softboxes with speedlights

February 21, 2016 Neil vN 43 Comments

Softboxes with speedlights for on-location lighting

Off-camera flash is the easiest way to create dynamic lighting - and using a speedlight with a softbox, is on-location lighting at its most elegantly simple. For most of my on-location portraits, I like to travel (fairly) light, and my lighting of choice is a speedlight, wireless transmitters and a softbox. The softbox is either held up by a light-stand (which I weight down with my camera bag), or held up by an assistant (with the softbox on a monopod.) I like TTL flash - it often gets us there faster than manual flash. But for  Read more inside...

Dramatic portraits of kids – Lighting and intent

February 11, 2016 Neil vN 9 Comments

Dramatic portraits of kids - Lighting and intent

When photographing portraits of someone, we can only leave so much up to serendipity. Deliberate action produces deliberate results. While things don't always work out to plan, having a plan helps propel things in a certain direction. With that, we need to be able to pre-visualize the photographs we want. We need to shoot (and use light) with purpose. Even if you are just experimenting and playing with your camera and lighting, you will fare better if you have some intended result in mind. Always that question in mind - what is it  Read more inside...

Flash photography – Changing the background color with gels

December 28, 2015 Neil vN 16 Comments

Flash photography - Changing the background color with gels

One of the biggest challenges when working in a studio, is that you're essentially shooting in a plain rectangular box. When photographing portraits, the two obvious ways out of that is to create an interesting (or complementary) background, and then to create interesting (or flattering) lighting. The lighting itself need not be complex. For this series of portraits of Olive, I used the gridded 1' x 6' softbox. By swinging it horizontally or vertically (or diagonally), I can change the way the light falls on my subject  Read more inside...

Video lights for wedding details

December 4, 2015 Neil vN 9 Comments

Video lights for wedding details

A versatile lighting tool that is always in my camera bag - a video light. With a video light you can localize how you light up something like details at an event. Unlike bounce flash, it doesn't light up the entire scene - just where you point the video light at. Eg: bounce flash vs video light. I love LED video lights (affiliate), since they are compact, don’t run hot, and the color balance can be continuously changed from 3200K tungsten (Incandescent) to 5600K Daylight. Light is produced flicker free at any frame rate or shutter  Read more inside...

Boudoir photography with a Hollywood glamor feel

October 22, 2015 Neil vN 3 Comments

Boudoir photography with a Hollywood glamor feel

I managed to acquire a lovely (and massively big) lighted table for my studio. I picked it up for quite a low price at a photography studio auction in New York, and now it has a new home. It was a missing piece in my studio - especially since I also offer the place as a photography studio rental (NJ) . But I digress. In other studios that I've used, I've used the glow of the circularly arranged lightbulbs, as a light source. For example in this photo session with Jessica Joy - composition: working towards the final image. A number  Read more inside...

Posing and lighting technique

August 24, 2015 Neil vN 3 Comments

Posing and lighting technique - posing in relation to the lighting

When taking a portrait, the pose needs to suit the lighting. And vice versa, the lighting needs to be done in relation to the intended pose. Especially so when the lighting is dramatic. This is such a key idea - lighting and posing are tightly correlated. Started again: you pose the participants in relation to the light. You light the people you photograph, in relation to how you position the light. When lighting a couple, I tend to favor the woman in terms of flattering light. So in setting up a pose, the lighting  Read more inside...

How to position off-camera flash

July 28, 2015 Neil vN 4 Comments

How to position off-camera flash

How to position off-camera flash

One of the most frequent (but easily corrected) mistakes I see when photographers use off-camera flash, is that they didn't position the flash in relation to their subject. They simply place the flash to the side (and often at a too-extreme 90 degree angle from their own position), with the flash too low in height. Your subject's pose and their position most often dictates how you should place the flash. We perhaps instinctively expect a light source to come from above somewhere, because that is where the sun is, or the light is coming from a  Read more inside...

Off-camera flash: Rim-lighting and using flare

July 22, 2015 Neil vN 13 Comments

Off-camera flash: Rim-lighting and the intentional use of flare

For these promotional photos for aspiring model twins, Carina and Carolina, we went to a park. There are certain things I look for when working on an location, that I know will immediately give me a better chance at successful portraits.  My book, Lighting and Design for Portrait Photography, looks at exactly that thought-process throughout the 60 chapters in the book. The technique here should be quite obvious by now: A long lens (a 70-200 used closer to the longer end), compressing the perspective. Shooting  Read more inside...

Portrait lighting setup – Chiaroscuro

July 10, 2015 Neil vN 7 Comments

Portrait lighting setup - Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro is defined as the use of strong contrasts between light and dark - bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. Chiaroscuro in an Italian phrase meaning Light and Dark. Chiaro = Light; Scuro = Dark. In Film Noir, there are many examples of the use of Chiaroscuro, enhancing the mood. Here though, we're going to look at a straight-forward way of using Chiaroscuro as a lighting technique. This then becomes an easy starting point to experiment further. By adding planes that have a gradient between light and dark, you can enhance  Read more inside...

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