Hi All.
For today’s post I thought I’d share with you some shots from a recent family shoot I did in the studio…
Now as a rule you won’t see many (if any) family photographs on my main website or here on the blog and that’s because it’s not my main body of work. However that being said it doesn’t necessarily mean I won’t on occasion take on this kind of work because I will, but what I’ll always do is add my slant to it in the way that they’re photographed, posed and/or edited.
Anyway here’s a random selection of images from the time we spent in the studio and at the end of the post I’ve added a little ‘behind the scenes’ information on how the set was lit plus a little bit on the editing side of things…
Lighting Set Up
This ‘White Seamless’ set up was one that I was introduced to by Zack Arias and it incorporates a reflective surface on the floor to add a little more interest to the shots:
The basic workings of setting up this kind of ‘rig’ is to first of all expose the subject of the shot correctly. Once you’ve nailed this exposure then the background which is to go white needs to be roughly 1½ to 2 stops brighter. This ‘lit’ background then reflects light onto the shiny white tile board being used as the floor and turns that pure white also.
The only thing to remember when photographing a subject on this kind of set up is to shoot from low down (kneeling) so that you catch as much of the light reflecting on the floor as possible otherwise it won’t appear to have turned white. It’s quite amazing to see the difference as when you shoot from standing the floor appears ‘off white’ almost grey but then by dropping to you knee the floor turns to pure white; and you’ve done nothing to the lights.
Shooting subjects on a ‘solid’ background
No ‘Rocket Science’ here but just something to consider…
If you’re photographing a person or anything for that matter on a background that is a solid colour e.g. White, Black etc.. and this colour is consistent across the frame i.e. there’s no dark or lighter parts then be sure to fill the frame with your subject. This way the sensor in your camera can do what it’s there for and that’s to capture as much detail as possible. If you want there to be some ‘dead’ space in your picture then this can be added later during the editing stage; this way your not wasting the pixels by photographing ‘nothing’…
Now that we’ve used our camera’s sensor to capture as much detail in our subject as possible we can then extend the background, and here’s a video that I recorded almost a year ago now that shows exactly how to do that:
As always if you have any questions or comment then please feel free to make use of the comments section below.
In the mean time whatever you’re up to have a great weekend,
Enjoy
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by Glyn
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