How do I light headshots on Wednesday, May 29th? (Caveat: I change it up all the time...).

Kirk Tuck, Self Portrait. 2013

I was lighting a portrait today in my little West Austin studio and the photographs of the attorney would was my subject this morning turned out very well. They're not great art, they are good, straightforward headshots that he'll use in his business. I wanted to write about today's session because I used a mix of lights and modifiers that aren't necessarily mainstream. I didn't use monolight flashes or battery powered flashes. I didn't use softboxes or umbrellas. But I'm happy with the colors and the results I was able to get.

The image above is to give you a general idea of how the lighting worked out. No big deal. I used the smile detection automatic function (glorified, semi-intelligent, interactive self-timer) in my Sony a99 in order to get the camera to fire for this test. I had a different, more glowering expression in mind but this was as close a compromise to a "slight smile" that the camera would accept.... For a client portrait this would be step one of three or four steps of retouching and post processing. I wasn't paying myself so I decided I didn't deserve the extra steps. :-)   (humor implied--note added for the linear thinkers).

My lighting for this set up consisted of three lights, one reflector and one diffusion panel. (You can click on any of the images in the blog to see them larger).

Kirk's basic headshot lighting setup.

I started with a gray background at the far end of the studio and a Sony a99 with a 70-200mm f2.8 G lens on the other. I figured out how far I wanted the subject from the background and I set my posing stool there. Then I back away until I got the right head size at around a 100mm focal length. That's the basic starting strategy for me. Once I know where my subject will be in relation to the background I can set up my main light.

Fotodiox Day-Flo Max DF-1500 Fluorescent.

I really like the light I'm getting out of the new generation of fluorescent fixtures. The one above, the one I'm using for my main light, is a six tube version that belts out a lot of power. Today I was running it with only two of the three banks engaged since that was all I needed to get a base exposure of 1/60th of a second shutter speed and f4 @ ISO 320. The light is being diffused by a Chimera ENG panel outfitted with a one stop diffusion sheet.  I'm pretty old fashioned. I set the light by looking for a little triangle of light on the subject's far cheek from the light. I don't want the triangle to exend much below the subject's nose and I want a small shadow under the nose as well. I've probably been to conservative with my light direction lately and should move the main light further off axis to create some bolder shadows. But then, we are all creatures of such habit.

Kirk Tuck's easy fill light...

My preference is to always use a passive fill. That basically means that I don't use a separate light fixture to fill in the shadow side of the face, I use a white card, or in this case a white fabric panel on a frame to bounce light from the main light into the shadow side of my subjects faces. The one above is a Westcott Fast Flag frame and fabric. I like them because they fold down small. I am able to quickly move the "flag" in toward the subject or back away from them in order to control the amount of fill and hence the amount of contrast.

Kirk Tuck's Portrait Lighting Set-up from the side.

Please note that even in the controlled environment of my own studio that the main light and the diffuser in front of it are both anchored with sand bags for the safety of my studio guests. If you are using heavy lights and metal frames yours should be anchored as well..."a gram of prevention.."

Kirk Tuck's Net Covered Hairlight.

I used a second light in the set up to backlight my subject. He was wearing a dark jacket and I didn't want him to merge with the gray background, especially if I decide to add a bit of vignetting in post production. I used the smallest of the Fotodiox lights which features one bank of two tubes. There's no dimmer on these units so we dim them in the traditional film school fashion by adding "nets" to the then. In the example above I'm using a two stop net from my 4x4 foot Chimera ENG panel kit to make the backlight more subdued and rational. Set you backlit in the right place after you get your subject settled.

A close up of Kirk Tuck's "Net Technique."

The use of panels and diffusers, reflectors and nets gives me a lot of flexibility when it comes to fine tuning light. But not everything in the studio is given over to fluorescents. I'm using one of the best LED lights on the market today as my background light. It's the Fiilex P360 and I wish I had the budget to buy a box full of these guys. I'm using the fixture with a Broncolor grid to give me a centralized spot of light on the background but with soft edges. Almost light what you might get with a fresnel spot light spotted in tight.

Kirk Tuck's amazing Fiilex P360 LED light with grid and C44.

Why do I like this light so much? Well, it's very, very bright, small and handy, kicks out nice, direct light that's different than the panels and can be very well color balanced for just about anything. Today, set just a little under it's maximum (coolest) temperature setting it was the perfect balance for the fluorescents. And having a background light that can be dimmed without changing color temperature is great. Why the grid? The light spread would have been to wide and too sharp edged if used unmodified...

You can see by referencing the clothespin

that the Fiilex is a small fixture but it has 

high, clean output. And a cooling fan that's quiet 

enough to be used near a video camera recording 

sound. Amazing.

Kirk Tuck's portrait lighting from the background position.

The panel to the far right of the frame is black on the other side and I use it to keep light from spilling around from the main light and lessening the contrast on the background. If you look through the windows in some of the shots you'll see that the lights are very color neutral in relation to daylight. That's how my lighting rolled today. Slightly conservative to match the personality of the sitter and his intended uses for the photographs. But done with continuous lights instead of the old iris pounders.

A perfect blend of lights for someone who likes shooting with an EVF. Comments? Derision? Weird, disconnected comments that attempt to direct readers to weirder online shoe stores? Leave em below.

Edited in later: The cheating version:

Sunday walk on Monday with an old favorite combo. Well, not that old...

Poster in the window at Garrido's Restaurant.

File the top image under: This is going to be fun...  I recently did photographs for Garrido's Restaurant's website which you can  see here: http://www.garridosaustin.com/ I've had a great time discovering different fun things on their menu and I would say that they also have one of the best happy hours in town. But on Thursday, the 30th of June, their marketing consultant is taking things up a notch, albeit only for one evening. They will be hosting a "Sexy Summer Fashion Event" as a fund raiser for Aids Services of Austin. It will take place from 6:30 to 8:30 pm and it should be a lot of fun. Just imagine a hip, downtown Mexican/Fusion restaurant, with a big, long patio and lots and lots of very beautiful young models walking through in various swim suits. Dinner, drinks and a head start on your beach wear shopping all at one go.

I don't usually go in for this sort of spectacle but.....I think I should grab one of my cameras and head over there. Just to document the event for the owner's, of course...

I shot the image above yesterday afternoon. I'd spent the morning cleaning out the studio office. I've been tossing out all kinds of crap that I will never need again. Like the notebook of invoices from 1998 which showed me just how precipitously the slide of monetary return of traditional photography has been in the ensuing fifteen years. I made the mistake of looking in the book and the associated ledger. I was shocked to see that we'd done 168 jobs in that year and our assignments took us to three other countries over the course of the year. By comparison we counted up just 60 photographic jobs last year (2012) and for far less income. But such is life. Thank goodness for book revenue and now, corporate motion pictures.

It was purging to toss a bunch of the past because looking at the past is about the least productive thing I can think of. But the accumulated weight of all the stuff I wanted to toss, both physically and mentally, became overwhelming and I had to take a break and take a walk. I never pass up the inclination for a good walk...

I was going to take a different camera but I brushed against an open drawer on the equipment cabinet and looked down into the Sony Nex drawer. There sat the cute and most proficient looking Sony Nex 6 camera festooned with it's shiny, silver 50mm 1.8 lens. I grabbed it and an extra battery and headed to the car.

Yet another new hotel comes to Austin. Right on Congress Ave.

I think it's funny that I spend my weeks shooting images of people and walking people through video interviews but when I head out the door to shoot for myself I'm nearly always drawn to shooting unpeopled landscapes and city views. Maybe the prevailing ethos in Austin now is the moving of dirt and vertical longing...

A river of rocks. On the way to the convention center.

It is amazing to me to think that I've been walking down these streets with a camera in my hand since 1978. Nearly 35 years. In some notebook I still have old Tri-X negatives of a much smaller and much scruffier downtown. Pre-gentrification. Nothing really open after nine or ten in the evening and the Stephen F. Austin hotel and the Sheraton at First and Congress Ave. were the only downtown hotels. Then the bars came, then the banks and finally the giant office buildings, and, in only the last few years, the gigantic residence towers. 

We went from free parking everywhere to valet parking or the endless ramps of the $20 parking garages. And when I walk through the city with my camera in my hand I see myself in the reflections of the buildings. And I've aged with the city but no matter how much I try to re-invent myself I'll never be able to make a transformation like downtown because I won't survive the endless demolition. But on some level I don't think I've changed; it's just everything around me that forgot to honor whatever pact we might have had to stay the same. But even that is silly. 

It's not just the cameras that changed it's also the things we point them at....

This will sound shallow and politically incorrect but I have to say it. People don't look as good as they used to. I've looked through old slides of political protests and music festivals and life in the streets and I compare the way people looked back then with the same situations today. The majority of people have become enormous. Just enormous. Easily 30 to 50 pounds more than the average thirty five years ago. Their bodies have little definition and their faces are puffy and indescript. And people's clothes have become uniform and boring.  It's almost as if the more popular our city becomes the more people default to the kind of clothes we used to wear to change the oil in our cars or mow our grass in, but now it's standard, everyday wear.

It's hard to make beautiful photographs if everyone looks like they just ate two dinners and got out of their pick-up trucks in the Walmart parking lot to head in and shop for wardrobe. Don't get me wrong, there are still people in Austin who run, swim, bike, eat vegan diets and hover around the perfect BMI for their body type but as the population expands so do the majority of the people. Tough times for photographers looking for classic beauty... (no picture supplied).

Light beams across the ceiling.

But some things seem eternal, like the light beams playing across the ceiling in a public building, the grafitti and the clear blue of the Austin sky after days of thunderstorms and wind...

The Littlefield building was looking spry and patriotic on Memorial day. And the flag was whipping in the breezes.

This afternoon, with momentum left over from yesterday, I emptied one Craftsman rolling tool cabinet and took three film cameras and two digital cameras to the Goodwill electronics drop off. Hadn't used any of those cameras in five years and don't know when I ever would again. Then I dropped off the rolling tool cabinet. And some lamps. And a couple older, battery powered LED lights. And the more I got rid of the more space I have to move around the office and make things more comfy.

Once again, the Frost Building. I shoot it because I like it but I post it because it pisses off one particular guy in the U.K. who thinks Austin buildings suck. Maybe true but they're all we've got.

All in all it's good to make more space for yourself. Fewer things to inventory in your mind. Fewer impediments to change.

A lonely tree.