Packing up for tomorrow's assignment. Subtractive lighting will be key.

 

Former CEO of Ottobock Canada. 

A different location from the law firm discussed below.

Over the last ten years most of my clients have evolved when it comes to executive portraits. We've moved past the traditional studio portrait and into environmental portraiture with gusto. Tomorrow I'll continue a series of portraits I started for a law firm here in Austin, adding portraits of two new attorneys. I'll be following a style that I set for them at the outset of our working relationship. It's all about making a nice portrait in the foreground and showing an out of focus rendering of the space behind the subject. The nicer the architecture and general/ambient lighting the more fun the photograph. 

The images for the law firm are done on location in their downtown Austin offices. From the outset I've done the portraits with LED light fixtures as my main lights. I started with LED panel lights ten years ago and over time I've upgraded the LEDs as better and better instruments have become available. I'm currently using Nanlite FS-300 Bi-Color (C.O.B.) units because they are bright, highly controllable, powerful, and reasonably priced. In all the time I've used the LEDs I have yet to come across a situation in which banding from the 60Hz A/C current has shown up. 

I'm a fan of big umbrellas as light modifiers and when I say "big" I mean the smallest umbrella I bring along is 60 inches in diameter and the usual umbrella I use as a main light is 72 inches in diameter. In addition to their size I try to use the umbrellas as close as possible to the subject. This results in a very soft but directional light with good fall off on the shadow side. 

I mentioned subtractive lighting in the headline and it's a very important part of my process, especially when working in an area where there are "can" lights in the ceilings that can't be turned off for the shoot. 

The can lights are almost always a poor photo rendering CRI and an ambiguous color profile, somewhere between Halloween orange and slime green. And the last thing I want is light from the ceiling mounted cans providing a hideous "hair light" on my subject. It's hard to correct in the photographs ... bordering on impossible. 

I want to be able to block the light coming from directly overhead and sometimes I want to block the light bouncing off a close by wall that's on the opposite side of my main light. A wall with white or light colored paint can sometime fill in too much and compromise the ratio of light-to-shadow on a face that I am try to achieve. To control or subtract the lights I don't want I bring two round pop-up disks that are 48 inches in diameter and can be set up with a black, light proof fabric on one side. Each subtractive panel requires a hardware piece to hold it in place and also to attach it to a tall light stand. And each panel requires its own light stand as well. 

In all I need to pack four fairly sturdy light stands, two modifier holders and a tripod in the stand bag. The Nanlites, the camera and lenses, and all the power cords get transported in a Manfroto roller case and everything, even the lighting case with wheels, gets lashed onto a Multi-Cart (like a Rock N Roller cart) to get the gear from the car in the parking garage, through the bank building lobby, and up to the 23rd floor. 

The lights and modifiers are the most important part of the kit and the camera and lens are mostly interchangeable between a range of options. As long as the lens is long enough to allow for a nice fall off of focus over distance. 

For tomorrow's adventure in portraiture I'm packing the Leica SL2 as my main camera and I'm pairing it with a 90mm lens. I haven't decided for sure whether I'm going to use the Sigma i-Series 90mm f2.8 or the Voigtlander 90mm f2.8 APO Skopar so I've packed both and I'll just let the photo spirits move me in the right direction. I have also packed an incident light meter and I've included the tiny Sigma fp camera (stripped down to its essential form) as a back-up camera; just in case. A few extra batteries and the case gets zipped up and put into the car. 

Even though I have photographed at this particular location about 60 times in the last ten years I'll start out by pulling out the camera, the lens and a tripod and roughing in how I'd like to position my subject in relationship to the background. I generally mark a position on the floor with blue "painter's" tape as an indication for where I'd like the subject to stand. I put a high backed office chair on the mark not for the subject to sit in but to use as an anchor for the subject. He or she will stand just behind the back of the chair and can use it as a convenient prop on which to rest their hands. The final crop is a "head and shoulders" so the chair, hands, etc. don't show up. 

While I'm setting up I sometimes use myself as a stand-in for the portrait subjects. Sometimes I get lucky and find an intern or assistant who can spare a few minutes to stand in and allow me to fine-tune distances and composition. The whole set-up process takes about 30 minutes, tops. 

After I've placed a chair and figured out the relationship between the tripod-mounted camera and the subject position I get to work blocking out the unwanted light with a light blocking round modifier. Then I add the main light --- and I don't know why but --- I always seem to light from my left or my subject's right. If there is a reason to go in the other direction I can usually tell in the first few minutes the subject is in place. With a big umbrella my rule of thumb is to place it no further away from the subject than the diameter of the umbrella. Closer if I want the light to be softer. But remember the inverse square law! The closer the light source to the subject the quicker the light falls off from one side of the face to the other. 

The final step is to add some more light to the background areas which may be 20, 30 or even 40 feet behind the subject. That's what the second light is really for. Usually I'll put the light into a decent sized hard reflector and put a grid on the front.  A tight grid is used because I want to make sure I don't over light the area just behind the main subject.

I meter to get into the ballpark and then fine-tune based on the EVF image in camera. For single subjects I nearly always use raw files, especially now when I want to be able to use A.I. noise reduction which is currently only supporting raw files in Adobe products. Achieving balance between background light and foreground is pretty critical but a lot can be done to "save" a file in post. Especially with the selection tools now available. 

In general the scene is best captured with the camera set to ISO 640, a shutter speed of 1/125th of a second and an aperture of f4.0 or f5.6. Go with the smaller aperture if you know you'll be treating the foreground and background separately; it all looks better if there is sharper edge detail to select against. 

I'll have the camera set to a white balance of 5100K. Seems to work best with the LEDs. 

The final tweak, as far as the lighting goes, is to adjust the subtractive light panels to the subject. I want to use them as close as possible but I have to keep in mind the angle of the main light --- which I don't want to the modifiers to block.

Then I smile my warmest and most gracious smile and we begin the photographic process. It's all fun and takes less time to do than to write about. And that's the long and short of it.

I have switched, over time, away from twin lights in softboxes to one big umbrella but this should give you and idea of the basic set up. The modifier on the right was used block light from bouncing off the yellowish wall and back onto the "fill" side of the subject's face. This image was done about four years ago... same just below.

the reverse.

Just going over in my head about what I need for tomorrow's sessions.

fun to be working.