Studio lights? No… livingroom window.
ByWhen you don’t have studio lighting, but need to take really great shots of someone, I can’t overstate the usefulness of using a big window. If you’ve got a white room, this can be like putting your subject inside a human sized lightbox.
I needed to do a headshot series for a friend, and also to get my FO shots for “Put a Little Love Out”. We didn’t have a studio space to work in, so I rigged something using the windows in my bedroom and the white sliding doors on my closet.
Jeanette is standing in front of my closet, facing the bedroom window. I have a camera mounted flash, with a softbox on the flash head, pointed up at the white ceiling instead of towards her face. On the bed in front of her is a reflector (read: tinfoil) which prevents any hard shadows underneath her features from the flash.
The results were perfect. The only retouching I really had to do was removing a slight shadow between Jeanette and the closet. It’s a good solution for quickie model photography on the cheap!
You can put that big window to use in other ways as well – here my girlfriend Lynn is posing in front of the window, and I’m using it as a giant lightbox behind her. I’m using a flash in the front with a softbox mounted directly to the flash to prevent her from becoming a silhouette.
In this case, when you use the window behind instead of in front, you get a nice light halo effect around your subject. In soft photography like maternity work this can work out really well for you.
So there you have it – whether you’re doing portraits or just need to get a good FO shot – you might not need to go far to have a great ‘studio’ set up!
This is great, the soft light for the maternity shots is gorgeous! I’ll have to practice that.
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I loved this post. I am not a professional photographer, nor do I want to do portraits or sittings or the like, but I love taking shots that look professionally done of my family and places we go. Your tips are really helpful to the person who doesn’t want to or can’t invest in all the photography equipment, but who still likes to try to be a bit artistic. Thanks for sharing. I’ll be reading every post.
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She’s a lucky mommy!
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And you are an excelent photographer.
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