Lighting 01 - Basic Portrait

As mentioned in my previous post, I’m going to start working on non-natural lighting. First up was a basic setup using a single flash into an umbrella, placed about 45 degrees to the front-left of the subject.

I made a short video that shows the complete setup and test shots. Update: I had music playing in the background which got the video banned by YouTube, so the video is now silent but hopefully the text explains it.

Here are the test shots from the video, I included a final shot at bottom-right with no flash to show the difference. The initial setting isn’t that important, but seeing the difference between the minor adjustments between shots.

Using this same simple setup, I shot the top featured photo which is now my new gravatar, and with much cuter models, I captured the following two sets of my daughters. Thankfully they are willing participants when I play around with the camera.

So far so good.