Eyes in the lower third of a vertical portrait! What??? I didn't think it would look good, the balance would surely be way out, it would appear upside down. top heavy, a bad move! How wrong I was.
The eyes in this picture of Abigail are truly magnetic, they draw the viewer in so much so that all else diminishes to the point where you do not notice just how opposed to traditional composition this shot really is.
Not sure about the strap though. Is it even noticeable? Should I take it out, or would I fail to make it disappear without trace? To my mind those amazing eyes do not allow my own eyes to wander enough to even see a strap.
Black and white photos have been popular since the year dot when cave men used charcoal sticks and nothing has changed for me - black and white rules in almost every case (see below).

I worked on this image in Photoshop, which was originally taken by Sandy at our studio, and tried to make a soft focus picture reminiscent of the 1940's, but I think we went over the top with too many lights. Just goes to show that not all photos are capable of becoming black and white masterpieces.
However, it does make a very reasonable colour portrait which has the potential of becoming a pretty good high key shot. Gaussian Blur with reduced opacity and a small amount of masking has produced a beautiful portrait which both Sandy and his model Abigail, and her mum should be especially proud of.
I love working with these old lights because I have to move them, feather them, modify them with white net curtains and I'm kept really busy helping the others take better and beter photographs. They're brilliant workers and I enjoy making sure they are learning something new all the time
Roll on the next studio session!!!
Keith (Strobist) Robins.

Portrait photography is my all time favourite. There can be few pleasurable pastimes more rewarding than being able to show someone just how beautiful they look, and as for being able to give them a print to prove it, wow!
Black and white has been one of my loves since the seventies, I guess most of us who have seen an image appear from a blank sheet of printing paper in a darkroom feel the same. Even in this digital age there is something riveting about a good black and white.
I had great deliberations over this first picture of Charlotte, do I make the most of Photoshop CS3's black and white filter by bringing in just a hint of colour, or leave it pure black and white?
So I did two of the same image. In this copy I brought back some colour in Charlotte's eyes and lips - which one do you prefer - which one will Charlotte choose to give her boyfriend, or her mum?
When I first started working in a girls school attended by girls from all over the world between the ages of 13 to 19 I thought I could tell a real beauty when I saw one. Wrong!!!
They reckon a camera doesn't lie - wrong again, sort of.
The camera can be told to record an image in the way you tell it to and what better way than to manipulate the lighting to reveal the more attractive features and let the rest languish in shadows. I've found the best way to achieve this is with studio lights, or hotshoe flashguns if working outdoors.

Making the most of lights and the modifiers which go with them takes a lot of practice which over the years builds into what's known as experience and it's this experience which I want to pass onto you followers of YeoPhotoGroup before I pop my digital glogs.
Photographing two girls under studio lights can be fraught with shadows hiding features which should be more prominent. What can be used to light up this shadow and what can I do about a missing catchlight? Exactly where to put those lights, how strong, whether to go for wide or snooted light, or should it be bounced or gridded, will a reflector help or hinder - these are all questions to which the answer is practice, practice, practice!
With so many variables of required lighting and an even wider range of lights and modifiers on the market, what to buy must seem mind boggling. Of course you could spend hundreds and find the lights are way too powerful for the size of studio available to you, or you could start by using someone else's cast offs which is what YeoPhotoGroup has done, although you'd have a job to tell by looking at these pictures Charlotte and Emily.
I think that with Emily's hair hanging slightly over her left eye that we should keep her right eye as the main point of focus. So that this remains the focus point throughout I often use centre point focus and try to concentrate on keeping that nearest eye as the very centre of my images. (The BBC camera crews always use the neasest eye as a point of focus for closeups of faces)
Cropping in Photoshop's Lightroom takes care of composition later, plus, I can go back into Lightroom as many times as I like and recrop the same image. I can also change it from colour to black and white and back again as Lightroom never effects my original Jpeg images, which means this is not the final image of Emily. There will probably be half a dozen different copies of this lovely picture over the next few weeks, each one with it's own merits.
Of course by then we'll have taken loads more on lots of different locations, under a variety of lighting conditions and all the while we are learning. In fifty years time we'll still be learning but it will be someone else pressing the button by then, building up their experience, shaping their own portfolio and hopefully their career as a photographer.
The best of luck in building your experience and if I can help then please ask.
Email my your problems, thoughts and a couple of your more successful images to:- robinsrepairs@btinternet dot com I'll leave you to take out the gaps and replace the dot.
I also use a set of Elinchrom DLite 200 watt lights with softboxes - they are robust, versatile, fan cooled, adjustable by five stops, the stands are very stable and I love them. Don't confuse the 200 watts with the power of an old fashioned photo floodlight - 200 watts is the recharge rate which they manage in an incredible 0.7 of a second and tells you it's ready with a little bleep, which can be turned off. The softboxes take a minute or so each to assemble and the same to dismantle. The kit comes in two slim very manageable bags, one of them is a much stiffer hardcase for the lights. They don't come with reflectors so I ordered one and wished now that I asked for two, plus two grids which just slot in the front a 12 degree and a 20 degree which I use frequently. The bulbs are protected by the two hard plastic cone shaped covers which are included. Power leads are very generous and are the 'Kettle' variety so a radio trigger will plug in between at the flash head end. An unexpected bonus was that each flash head came with a built-in cooling fan which hadn't been in the original specifications. However, they really do prevent the heads overheating and I wouldn't be without them. Photos and details of my home setup will be in a later post.

Take a £7 shower curtain, plus 12 feet of copper tubing and make a 3 foot by 6 foot reflector.
My wife sewed a pocket at each end of the curtain from the bathroom department of a DIY warehouse leaving an access point at one end. Into these pockets I slipped two lengths of plumbers 15mm copper tubing with a 'Tee' joint soldered in the centre of each

Cut off a seven foot length of tube and about a foot in from each end bend to almost ninety degrees, 75 degrees is best as ninety allows the joints to come apart during use and too straight an angle makes it difficult to assemble.
Use a drill to remove any excess solder from the empty socket of the 'Tee' joint which may prevent easy entry of the main support pipe.
After bending the pipe you'll need to cut the ends back until you can assemble the framework without struggling yet still keeping the material taut.
There are several benefits to bending the pipe, easy assembly, creates a natural spring which keeps material taut, easy dis-assembly, and less of a sharp shadow caused when using as a sun diffuser.
There is very little twist on account of the two bends and the positive way they lock in place whereas the mark one model suffered a lot from twisting in even a light breeze as it had no bends at all.
It's light enough to be held out level from one end with two hands and the addition of a clamp and wing nut makes for easy adjustment.
Total costs - about £15. Time to make - a couple of hours one Sunday afternoon. Assembly of the finished DIY reflector takes just twenty seconds and packing it up takes thirty. The very first time it took half a minute to put up and has since worked out at a constant twenty seconds. Rolling up the material and slipping on an elastic band takes a little longer as I try to avoid creasing the shiny material - I've taken longer to find a spare memory card!
okay, so the main pipe is rather long and unwieldy but a small price to pay when similar sized reflectors cost around £150.
A lighting stand makes this a very versatile reflector / diffuser for portrait work under all sorts of difficult lighting conditions.
I'm now working on a half sized reflector with a light spraying of golden orange paint on one side as I need a smaller reflector for helping capture golden sunrise portraits similar to those I've seen in magazines, plus I'd like to bounce a flash out of it.
Hmm, a smaller one would probably fit into that 27" toolbag I picked up in Jewsons Building merchants for £14, along with all the other bits and pieces we strobists seem to carry around on photoshoots
Keith (Strobist) Robins

Newcomer Liz learnt how to use a single studio flash really fast. Okay, so in this first relaxed picture of Jane, one of Yeovil Camera Club's prettier members, there is a small hair light at two o'clock high but then we dispensed with that and tried to be as creative as possible with just the one light.
Positioned less than arm's length to camera left and using a shoot-through brolly this light has certainly seen some faces in the last 30 years, but it's still capable of producing the goods.
Yes, I do own a set of Elinchome D-Lite 200's with soft boxes but I rarely use them for any of these YeophotoGroup posts as the idea is to press home the point that you do not need to spend lots of money to have fun with your photography.
For this second shot of Jane I think we should have moved the light a little nearer the camera, although the brolly edge might then have intruded into the specs as an unwelcome reflection.
Note how Liz has just managed to keep the whole of Jane's eyes visible behind the rims of her specs. Always try to get the whole eye / eyes as these are the make or breakpoints of beautiful portrait work.
The latest addition of a Black and White filter in Adobe CS3 is fantastic, all it needs is a slight lift in the red and yellow channels followed by a faint touch of black paint in the white mask box to bring just a hint of colour into Jane's lips, eyes and hair. For a first timer regarding portrait work Liz did exceptionally well with these three shots.
When it came to lighting a couple we decided to add a reflector.
A white shower curtain from Aldi supermarket cost me £7, add on 12 feet of 15mm copper pipe and a couple of joints and I have a six feet by three feet shiny white reflector for a total sum of under £17 - a post on how to make this will be coming up soon.
About ten shots into the couple sequence Liz caught this lovely pose of Jane and the YCC chairman Sandy perfectly. Some might say those fingers on the right are intrusive but with a simple soft edged vignette I think Liz has a competition winner here.
Well done Liz, hope to see you here again at the YeoPhotoGroup studio
Keith (strobist) Robins.