I recently dug up this old portrait lighting cheat sheet that I used back when I was just starting to learn how to shoot with artificial lighting. It’s not a fancy cheat sheet, but it does its job. You can see how the light falls onto the subject in different positions straight on, angled down and angled up. This was a huge help to me when learning lighting. Not because I did not understand when others were telling me this stuff, but because It was hard for me to see the difference in the final images.

But with this cheat sheet I was able to see what the light would look like in each position. This allowed me to easily decide where to place my lights and reflectors to get the results that I wanted. Below you can see an small version, if you would like the look at the full size you can get that here.

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In this video, we will talk about several things to look for using the images that I shot of my father while he was playing with his grand daughter.

Watch the Video

Think Before You Shoot

During our family BBQ, I saw my father playing with his grand daughter and I thought that this moment would make for some great photos. So I took a quick shot and got our classic example of a walk up shot. I walked up to the scene and aside from kneeling down a bit for a lower point of view, I simply took a picture with little to no thoughts on composition, story, framing, and so on.

While this image is just fine for your standard candid shot, it doesn’t convey the same sense of fun and excitement my father had that I could clearly see being in the moment. So, while my father was enraptured by the new addition to our family, I snuck down to shoot an image from my daughter’s perspective using the rocker to frame my father.

From this perspective, we are immediately pulled into the excitement and emotion that my father is feeling in playing with his new grand daughter. To complete the set, I shot one more image from my fathers perspective capturing Ellie looking up at him.

In Conclusion

Now, while the first image is not bad and can still tell the story of my father’s interactions with my daughter, the two subsequent images paint a stronger emotional connection between the two. Of course, the first image is not a toss-away because it does help set the scene for this image grouping.

So in conclusion, whenever you are going to take a snap-worthy image, stop for a moment and think about your subject matter, story, and composition. It’s a great practice and it will help you develop your photographer’s eye, as well as produce more interesting images right off the bat.

That’s it for this week’s Photography Tips in Two!

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Prize Giveaway

A $50 gift card to the SLR Lounge Store will be given to our top pick in each episode! If you are the winner of this episode, please send an email to contact@slrlounge.com and we’ll hook you up! Click HERE to visit the SLR Lounge Store. (Watch the video or scroll down to see who won the gift card in this episode!)

The Weekly CC Video

The Images

Little Angel by Brown Cardinal

DJ Portrait by Sairo

7 Second Window by MZGloves20

New Puppy by dretket

Soft Focus Portrait by Simon Wantling

IMG 9260 by Marcel Lr

The Winner

And now, this weeks’ CC prize goes to…

1st Time Posting Before and After by Htran5

The post More on Portraiture – Constructive Critique Episode 20 appeared first on Free Photography Tips Tutorials Reviews and Wordpress Themes.

What’s up everyone, this is Pye. Just wanted to give a shout out and welcome to Craig Lamere, one of our newest SLR Lounge writers! Craig is a great photographer and he is a valuable addition to the team. Enjoy the article!

How We Shot It

The “How We Shot It” series is composed of images submitted by our writers! But, did you know that we also have a segment called “How You Shot It”? If you enjoy sharing how your images were created, please send us an email at contact@slrlounge. Of course please understand that we receive innumerable emails every day, and only select a small percentage of article submissions for actual publication based on image and tutorial quality.  Thanks, and enjoy!

The Photo

Background and Vision

For about the last year or or so I’ve been on this fabric store kick where I will go to my local fabric store and look for cool fabric to make some type of garment to shoot. Since I have no idea at this point how to sew I’m pretty much limited to wrapping, pinning, taping and twist tying everything. I always go to the bargain bin to find my fabric. To me it’s like treasure hunting. I found these two pieces of fabric I loved. One I used to make the dress, which we wrapped Brooklynn in and the other I used as a type of vail and held it on by taking a strand of fake flowers and making a head wreath. I have to say I was super happy with the overall look that was created with $12 of fabric and a $7 dollar clearance strand of fake flowers!

Equipment and Camera Settings

• Canon 5D III
• Canon 100 L 2.8
• 1/160 sec @ f/10 & ISO 100
• Manual exposure, Manual WB, RAW

Lighting Setup

This was a very simple lighting setup. I shot this portrait  in front of a grey muslin in my studio. The lighting was a one-light set-up using a 42″ Octa and a white V-flat reflector to balance things out.  See the lighting diagram below!

The post How We Shot It – Finding Treasures at Your Local Fabric Store appeared first on Free Photography Tips Tutorials Reviews and Wordpress Themes.

The Concept and The Set Up for the Summer Shoot

Just like the Spring shoot, I shot the summer image from the second story balcony with a 160mm focal-length lens to compress the image and give a bird-eye-view.

For the Summer shoot, I wanted to replicate the brilliant sunlight. For me, summer is all about the beach and the beautiful women basking in the open sun. Rather than just using sand, I used $50 worth of glitter for the sand to further accentuate the sun light.

Unlike the soft, feathered light that I used for the Spring image, the Summer image is large hard light meant to simulate direct sunlight. Even though the light will be hard, I also want to make sure the light source is not small, so I employed a bare bulb Einstein monolight as key. Right behind it on the same axis, I used another Einstein with an open Paul Buff Extreme Silver 64″ parabolic light modifier umbrella at 1/3 stop less light. It is both a large source of light and a relatively contrasty light, as well.

Finally, I had my assistant hand-hold a third Einstein with a 7″ gridded reflector for hairlight.

The Equipment and Settings

Camera: Panasonic GH3
Lens: Panasonic 35-100mm f/2.8 zoom lens (Full-frame equivalent 70-200mm)
Focal Length: 80mm (Full-frame equivalent 160mm)
Shutter Speed: 1/160th
Aperture: f/8.0
ISO: 200

Before and After Image

Even with $50 of glitter, I still did not have enough to cover the tarp that my model is laying on, so I had to clone a lot of the glitter gold from this and several other shots. Finally, I used my retouching workflow that I will cover in a future article.

Here is the finalized image. You can click on it to see a larger version of Summer.

Be sure to keep stay tuned to see how I light and shoot the rest of the Seasons shoot! You can also see more of my work at Fotosiamo.com

Beauty For All Seasons by Joe Gunawan | fotosiamo.com

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