Another Location Portrait Assignment

Another Location Portrait Assignment

by William Lulow

I just finished another location shot, this time it was a portrait for a book jacket. I did this in Florida while vacationing down here. The first thing I did was to have an idea about how I wanted the portrait to look. I wanted to have the sun behind the subject, as I usually do, and fill in the shadows with light from one of my portable speedlights. When I woke up on the morning of the shoot, alas, there was no sun. So, I decided to manufacture the light that the sun would have provided by using a second speedlight to simulate the highlights. The setup involved someone holding the second speedlight while I placed the first one (mainlight) on a stand. This was the result:

Notice that the background is completely soft, rendered out of focus by the limited depth-of-field of my 135mm lens. The highlight on the subject’s hair was made by the accent light actually hidden behind a tree. The mainlight was provided by another speedlight placed on the stand to the left of the camera.

The lighting diagram for this shot is:

The line in front of the accent light represents the position of the tree that I used as a “gobo.” (A GOBO is any object placed in front of a light source to keep light from hitting the lens.)

So, the accent light served to separate the subject from the background as well as to give the hair some light.

Here is another image from the shoot:

This shows off the difference between Black&White and color head shots. We used to use Black&White all the time for head shots. Now, color has been accepted as a norm.