The chronology of a studio portrait – my starting point
This is all about the way I do portraits in the studio. It is the complete chronology of a great studio portrait. You can see the finished image above. It has been edited in my standard style and is the result of many processes, some obvious and others not so. How did I get there and what sort of work is involved? You can see my starting image below. Read on and I’ll take you through a typical workflow for me when I create studio portraits. There is a lot of information so this will be a blog in several parts.
It’s not just pushing a button
You may have read in some other posts, or on my pages, that I am passionate about photographing people. It has taken me a long time to learn how to do it properly, and I have met some fabulous teachers along the way. I won’t go too deeply into that bit of my learning curve as it’s another story for a different time. What I do want to mention at this point are two phrases I have heard at some of the many weddings I have done in my time. I intensely dislike both of them. The phrases are “you must have a really good camera” and “my mobile phone can do that”. Humour me and read on; you will see why those words upset me and why it’s not about just pushing a button. By the way, I’m big on sarcasm, not bitterness.
The creation of a great studio portrait
Where is the creation point of a great studio portrait photograph? Ask that question to most people and they would probably say it’s the point at which the photographer pushes the shutter button and an image is magically created in the camera he or she is holding. In reality, it starts much earlier than that. To establish the starting point we have to look at a number of factors. Let’s start with the fundamentals of any studio portraits photograph.
The fundamentals
Let me be clear from the beginning, it is not my intention to write a thesis on photography here. I will try to keep things simple because above all I am a simple creature. That said, let’s get started. All photography, either film based or digital, uses a combination of three things to produce a picture. They are the shutter speed, the aperture and the sensitivity of the recording media using an ISO value. That’s called the exposure triangle. They all have a relationship to each other, and changing the values of one will need the other values to change to compensate. The whole idea of photography is to get just the right amount of light to the recording media, not too much or little. Isn’t that easy? According to popular belief, it will be if you have a very good camera. It’s probably a good time now to debunk that ‘very good camera’ phrase.
Studio photography – the basics
Surely taking a picture is just taking a picture. Point at the subject, focus, press the shutter button and hey presto – a picture! Not so Cato. For my younger readers, Google The Pink Panther movies. Anyway, it’s not that simple. For studio portrait photography aperture is always king in controlling the amount of light getting to the recording media. For those unsure what the aperture is, it is the size of the hole that is created in the camera when you press the shutter button. That is important because studio portrait photography requires the use of studio flash heads that fire an incredible amount of light at your subject for a very brief amount of time. The bigger the hole the greater the amount of light hitting the recording media. The smaller the hole and the reverse is true. To get exactly the right amount of light on the recording media the photographer has to take control and tell the camera what’s going to happen. I’ll cover how that happens in another post. When the photographer takes control that means using the manual mode, not those fancy automatic modes. The important thing to note is that the photographer is in charge, not the camera,no matter how good it is.
Other things to consider before starting
There are lots of things to think about so I will try to be brief and not too technical. I will work from the back of the studio forwards towards the camera. The bit of kit furthest away from the camera is the background. You can use anything you like, but I use use either a plain dark grey paper roll, or a textured paper. I’ll explain more about why I do that in part 2 – probably. Next up are the lights. There is an almost infinite number of lighting set-ups, ratios and modifiers that can be used. Each will create a different look, sometimes subtle, others drastic. All of my studio portraits use the same four light set-up because I want consistency. The final parts of the jigsaw are the flash trigger, camera and lens. I will go into more detail about those, the lights and the background in the next part of this series.