You'd be forgiven for thinking these portraits were taken in a studio - whereas actually they were amid the bluebells of Sparkford woods around dusk, plus another two hours beyond.
Here's Bob, one of YPG's newer members, studying the results of his experimenting with a fibre optic ring flash while the main studio light is set off via my radio trigger. Okay, so I should have made more of the gorgeous bluebells, but I've been there, done that. Besides, portraits are my favourite area of photography.
Running a studio light away from any mains electricity is usually extremely expensive. Not anymore! Maplins sell a 1,000 watt inverter for less than £100This picture of Charlotte was powered by a 12volt car battery, through a maplin invertor and has no trouble powering a single Elinchrom 200watt D-Lite2.
A Kenro five-in-one reflector helped lighten the shadows and eliminated the need for a second Elinchrom head. The Elinchrom D-lite2 heads have a 4 amp drain but it is only for 0.7 of a second so the 1,000watt inverter doesn't quite reach the stage where the power safety switch cuts out.
Laura, who's never done any sitting in front of a camera before, came along too
and with a little verbal encouragement enabled us to capture this lovely semi black and white photo. I said that her eyes were one of her more attractive features and that I'd try to show them at their best.I love playing around in photoshop and creating these semi black and whites with a softness produced via Guassian blur along with a layer mask.
For instance this one of Laura has a blurred copy layer, but the semi black and white effect is the result of leaving the blur at 50% then highlighting the lower layer and using the Mono button of Colour Mixer in CS2.
I love the way Emily's face is illuminated from a long way around to the left and only creates a small nose shadow in the shot on the left, plus how she's looking straight up at the large white reflective brolly. Shoot-thro brollies seem to lose a lot of power by not reflecting all the light so I'm really glad I snapped up this large bargain of a reflective brolly at a photo sale for £15.
Meanwhile, the nose shadow across Charlotte's cheek doesn't look right here and I should have asked her to tilt her head to the opposite side.However, I still like the colour, the softness and especially the twinkle in her eye. Notice how the reflector casts a faint catchlight in her left eye?
My favourite shot of the evening is this one of Emily with it's superb soft lighting, a smile that's not over the top, a good sized catchlight in both eyes, plus the way her tumbling hair surrounds her face adding even more beauty to the finished photo.Bluebells? What bluebells? They were there in the background, promise! I'm more than happy with these results and look forward to the next time with this trio of amazing girls.
Keith Robins.
