Rumination
Black and white studio portrait of a girl
Black and white studio portrait of a girl
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Jan, 2016Views
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Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
Behind The Lens
Location
This image was taken in my small home studio in Scotland. I'm disabled so my days of landscape and street/architectural photography have ended so the studio is the most convenient place in which to continue making photographs.Time
It was taken in the early evening, although being a studio image, the time isn't important since I have full control of the lighting.Lighting
The image was lit by a single studio flash head fitted with a 4' x 4' softbox positioned slightly above and about 45 degrees to the left of the model. I find that trying to keep the lighting simple can have very pleasing results.Equipment
I used a Nikon D4 at 1/125sec, f16, ISO 100 fitted with a Nikon 24-70 lens with a single 'Elemental' 400w flash head diffused by a 4'x4' square softbox. The camera was handheld.Inspiration
The model isn't professional, she's a family friend and I simply asked her to sit for me. I've always admired the early portraits of film stars fom the early to middle part of the 20th century, particularly those of the great photographer, Yousuf Karsh who, in my opinion, is a master of portraiture. Having viewed and appreciated much of his work, I tried to produce my own interpretation of the style he frequently used.Editing
The processing for this shot was minimal with a conversion to monochrome and a slight smoothing of the skin in Photoshop CS5.In my camera bag
I normally have... Nikon D4 DSLR, Nikon D800 DSLR, Nikon 14-24mm f2.8 lens, Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 lens, Nikon 70-200 f2.8 lens, Nikon 50mm f1.8 lens, Nikon 85mm f1.8 lens and a Nikon 105mm macro f1.8 lens. I also have 2 x Newer speedlights and one Nikon SB900 speedlight as well as a Metz Mecablitz 76MZ5 hammerhead flash.Feedback
The best advice I could give to anyone would be to study and analyse the images produced by some of the great early portraiture photographers such as Yousuf Karsh, Edward Weston, Steve McCurry, George Hurrell etc and dissect their images relative to the pose and lighting used and then, find a suitable model and try to emulate some of the lighting used by these master photographers. That's what I do, not always successfuly, but I've learned so much about lighting (quality, direction etc.) just by studyine their work.
