Sometimes you get too hung up on on type of photography you forget to try new things or things you have done before in the past. I know after reading Strobist for so long I have tried to use off-camera flash for everything. But last weekend upon arriving at a dance studio to shoot headshots for a local student-run dance company (EXPOSED Dance Initiative) I say this giant well lit window that I thought would be perfect to use as a nice soft light source.

I completely forgot to take photos of the set/location but here is a group photo that was NOT taken with just window light, but the window light was used to wrap around the group of dancers (but this is for another post). It does show a little bit of the dance studio and the large windows which are perfect for our use.

If you’ve been follow David Hobby’s blog Strobist or know a little bit about portrait lighting you should know that it isn’t always about the quantity of light you have but more so about the quality and direction of light.

Well how do we improve the quality of light? Well depending on our application we sometimes want a nice soft light that doesn’t cast distracting and ugly shadows all over a subjects face. In order to do that we need a nice large light source. The larger the light source the softer the light. That’s why photographers use flashes firing into umbrellas. It makes their tiny flash seem bigger as it lightens the entire umbrella. So in these headshots I could have used a flash and umbrella but why waste such a prime location?

So I positioned each dancer close to the window and turned them slightly so that the light from the window would hit them from such an angle that it would create a more dynamic modeling light. The slight shadows on the unlit side of the face help to add depth to each image. Try playing around with the position the light comes from by turning the model and repositioning yourself to see how the light and it’s direction changes the images.

If you wanted to shoot nice portraits by the window I recommend you using a portrait lens (ie. 50mm F1.8, 85mm F1.8, 70-200mm F2.8) and shooting relatively wide open at say F2.8 to blur out the distracting background.

So next time you see a large window, whip out your favourite portrait lens and start taking pictures!

These are some photos from a while back when it was still relatively warm outside and when you could actually dress a model in a cute dress and shoot for an hour without freezing. I just wanted to give some tidbits of information regarding portrait/fashion photography at night. First off here are the photos. They are of Trina a model/dancer that I met last year:

I don’t really enjoy shooting at night. It’s cold. It’s hard to use auto focus. There isn’t much ambient light to play around with. Now I will suggest ways to overcome these difficulties.

People who insist on shooting at night should get some warm gloves. Make sure you have a pair that allows you to use your fingers as they are really important when trying to operate your camera. Get a pair like these:

At night, in the cold, these are your friends.

Also it will be really hard to auto focus at night so I suggest buying a good strong portable flashlight to use as a handy focus assist. Sometimes a cellphone with flash works in a pinch. This will save your life as if you organize a shoot without some sort of flashlight you will end up spending 90% of your time trying to achieve focus and get a bunch of blurry photos for all your trouble.

If you know me personally or from my previous work you will know I love using off camera flash and on location photography. There is always some much light outdoors compared to a studio with which you can play and balance the light with. Outdoors at night it is difficult to find this ambient light depending on where you are photographing. I suggest you not use natural light only. If you try this you will inevitably have to be shooting with a really high ISO (ruining image quality), or at a really wide open aperture (losing sharpness and depth of field). What you should do is use a moderate ISO that isn’t too high that will kill all your detail, low shutter speed to pick up more ambient, and flash to freeze your model.

So for the first photo mentioned in this post I used an ISO of 1250 (decent on my Canon 30D), and a shutter speed of 1/40th of a second to pick up the ambient light from downtown Kingston, Ontario. Normally 1/40th of a second at 75mm would turn out blurry but I had a flash fired through a diffuser to help freeze her in her pose.

The second photo was done in a dark tunnel while the sun was setting. I will leave you to figure out how it was photographed for yourself. Have fun!

That’s it for now.

-Spencer

Here is what one of the dance photos from Tricia’s dance session looks like before and after editing. The wall behind was really busy and there just wasn’t enough light to completely white out the wall with the AlienBee flashes. The flashes had a tough time whiting the wall because the two flashes had to be set so far apart based on the variety of running jumps Tricia was doing. This meant hours of Photoshop work had to be done.

Basically I changed the white balance; clone stamped/healing brushed out the distracting background elements; brightened a copy of the background using a layer mask and the multiply blending mode; darkened the ground using a layer mask and overlay blending mode.

I did not have fun doing these edits.

Lesson learned:
Get it right in the camera in the first place.

Again, in case you missed it here is the lighting info for this photo.

Two Alienbee AB400’s firing through umbrellas at 1/1 into the wall behind. One Nikon SB25 and one Canon 580EXII both firing bare at 1/8th on the left and right of the Tricia. Then add some MAGIC*!

On camera settings were 17mm focal length, ISO 400, F5 aperture, and 1/250th of a second shutter speed. I choose a wide focal length because Tricia was moving around so much, ISO 400 because I had relatively weak hot-shoe flashes firing and I didn’t want to miss shots because of recycling time, F5 because it gave me slightly more depth of field while not using too much of the hot-shoe flashes power. A shutter speed of 1/250th of a second because that was the fastest my flash sync speed could go and you need a fast shutter speed to catch fast motion.

This is one photo of an ongoing dance series I am planning. Tricia has been a dancer since age three and she is one of the best dancers I have ever had the chance to work with.

Assistant Photographer: Tracy Z.

Storbist and Lighting Info:
Two Alienbee AB400’s firing through umbrellas at 1/1 into the wall behind. One Nikon SB25 and one Canon 580EXII both firing bare at 1/8th on the left and right of the Tricia. Then add some MAGIC*!

*MAGIC = 1 hour of Photoshop.