Studio Lighting Archives | Mastering Portrait Photography

Video: Headshots with whatever you’ve got (studio flash / speedlights / windowlight)

Want to create corporate headshots but not sure how? Scared of studio or location lighting? Wondering how to work with windowlight? This video shows how you can create striking, flattering and professional-looking headshots no matter what your lighting set-up is. First, Paul talks about the importance of eye contact in corporate headshots. He explains what to consider when planning what orientation to use (upright or landscape format), and talks about how the confidence of both photographer and subject develops over …

Video: BJJ Fighters – Pose, Shoot, Photoshop

In this video, we take a couple of good friends of the studio – Chris and Ben – who are both Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) Fighters and create some images for their new YouTube channel. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to show: How I work with, pose and frame two subjects for an image that will fit a wide aspect ratio (for a video channel). How to light dark-toned clothes so that they stand out on a dark background. How I met …

Creating Stunning Portraits With Rotolight AEOS and NEO2

The good folk at Rotolight lent us two pieces of kit for this demo: the Rotolight AEOS and the NEO 2. These lights were originally designed for video work, but Rotolight have added a strobe feature that means they can be used like studio flash lights or location strobes (off-camera flash). They are extremely lightweight, very portable and their battery goes on as long as you can. We had a lot of fun putting them through their paces! The ideas …

Video: Studio Lighting For Available-Light Photographers

Perhaps you’re fairly (or very) comfortable with window-lit portraiture, but feel a little intimated by the idea of studio strobes. If so, you’re definitely not alone! For a very long time, I struggled to understand all the technical detail that seemed to be a requirement for getting started with studio lighting, especially as I just wanted to get back to what I love doing most – creating beautiful portraits! I finally had a breakthrough and realised that my knowledge of photographing …

Walkthrough: Fast Method For Retouching A White Background

In this video, I talk through how to clean up a white background. The image in question is of two puppies taken for the Hearing Dogs where I shoot pretty much every week. The priority for this particular technique is the balance of speed to quality, something that is often missed: all too often, photographers think quality is the ultimate goal but, of course, it’s only the goal for an appropriate price, whereas it’s the balance of quality and the …

Flattering Faces: Broad and Narrow Lighting

Different face shapes benefit from different lighting patterns. Read on to find out how to slim down a wide face or fill out a narrow one by changing just small thing – the angle of your subject’s nose relative to your main light. According to the people who measure these things, there are seven basic face shapes: oval, round, square, diamond, heart, pear and oblong. For our purposes, however, we’ll use a shape sorter with just two categories. The first …

Video: Studio-Style Portraits of Bob with one Flash Gun

No studio? No problem. It’s cheaper than ever to get flash guns that you can use on- or off-camera. In fact, some enterprising brands are now offering complete sets of flash guns with transmitters and receivers for under £200. With a little bit of thought and one or two light modifiers (including a simple white-painted wall), you can recreate studio-style portraits in any location. In this video, my friend, neighbour and very patient portrait sitter Bob steps into the studio. …

Video: One-light studio portrait of Lily in the red dress

I was planning a high key shot of Lily in her stunning red dress, but opted for a more painterly, low key set-up instead. Find out why it’s easier to work with one light than multiple ones, and peek behind-the-scenes of this set-up. Here is the lighting used for the image in this video.

Image Critique 2

Welcome to the second of our image critiques. We’re still finding our feet with these so please give us any feedback (good and bad) as we decide how we want these to look and feel. If you’re one of our members and would like your images critiqued, please use the ‘image critique’ menu option above to submit a file (or more than one of you wish.) Your image will then appear in one of the future episodes! If you’re not …

Image Critique 9

Image Critique 9 Another four images under the loupe (well, on the screen anyway). Two studio portraits, two out on location – plenty to enjoy! If you would like your images critiqued, please use the Image Critique menu option above to submit a file (or more than one of you wish). Your image will then appear in one of the future episodes!