One Light Portrait
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Light makes a difference. I sat in one of Joe McNally’s classes and he said, “If you’re thinking about making real money with photography, you’re going to have to get used to using light.” I tell the people I tutor, the same thing, and I also make clear that there’s natural light (ambient light) as well. But, even with natural light, you’re going to have to learn how to use it. This photograph was shot using one strobe with a softbox and a sliver reflector.
When I was a beginner, I was afraid of using light; mainly because I didn’t know how to use it. One of my photography professors shared the secret with me about using light. I’m going to share it with you. The secret about using light and the best way to use light is to, put the light where you want it. It’s that simple. If you placed light behind a subject, in front of the subject will be dark. Do you want it to be dark? If so leave it, if not then place the another light where you want more light and take the photograph. For this photograph I used one light to the left side of the model and I felt as if I wanted to bounce a bit more light on to the subject so I used a reflector.
You should be familiar with your f-stops, shutter speeds and ISO settings by now. You want to be familiar before you start using strobes. Because then we start talking about shooting with 1/1 (full power), half power etc. The more you practice the better you will get at it because you will start to remember the settings.
Getting good at anything takes practice. However, Practice/Getting better with our photography gets quite expensive; no one never told you photography was cheap. If they did they were lying to you. There are ways to cope with the expenses though; rent the equipment. I’m not able to afford my flock of D3’s as yet, I’m not able to purchase my Elinchrom lights as yet like I used for this shoot. They are in expensive though, somewhere around 1.6k for the kit with two lights etc. if you bought them. If you are in my position the money comes and the money goes, you have electricity bills pay, phone bills, (if you are a photographer wanting to make it turn off your cable like I did), internet bills, the list goes on and on. If you’re not and you are going to purchase them anyway, help a brother out, forget the 500 go for the 600 and make your purchase here: Purchase Elinchrom Strobes
You probably didn’t buy those lights, but if you did thank you because you just helped me pay my mother back for all of the money she spent on me for college. I rented the light from a company Apeture Professional Studios & Supply in Miami, Florida. I’m giving them a shout out here on the blog because they are extremely nice people and they have amazing professional gear you can rent for cheap for film and photography.
So what now? Write your client a proposal and include the fee of renting the equipment you need. After a few shoots you will begin to stack a few dollars to buy the equipment you need. The downside is a little profit lost for you. If you had the equipment you would be able to charge your clients the same fee, but, you make more because you don’t have to pay to rent. A few losses/ lower profit won’t hurt to get your name out there with better looking photographs.
Scott Kelby has a book, well Scott has many books, but the book that teaches you how to shoot a portrait with one light and multiple ways of lighting portraits is called Photo Recipes Live Behind The Scenes: Purchase Photo Recipes Live On Amazon
I was fortunate enough to help Scott out as a second assistant on a few photo shoots. I like that the book comes with a dvd you can watch and follow along with. Scott may seem pretty down to earth in the dvd, really relaxed and excited about you learning. Well, that’s because he ’s really that way; I like that about him, an all around nice guy, nothing filtered. The book makes you feel as if you have Scott right there teaching you one on one. Scott Also has an app now for Photo Recipes, take a look at this article, it’s mentioned on the 4th subtitle. [Here's The Link].
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