Portrait Photography - My Frustration Level is Peaking!

[ddt0725]

Jan had some terrific advice. Start with what you know. If you need to capture the moment then use on-camear E-TTL with bounce. At least you'll likely get what you need that way. I understand that you want to learn how to use off-camera flash. Like Jan said, start with one flash. See what it can and cannot do. Each light in a setup has a specific task (Key, Fill, Separation, Background, etc). I know the temptation is to use them all but sometimes one or two will do. Try using one umbrella/softbox and see what it does for you. Move it around and see how that affects the light and shadows.

Yep, I think what happened was I started doing more than I was ready for and ended up worse off than when I started months ago! Instead of moving forward slowly, I took a giant leap and ended up with a mess!

Tonight I started with the one softbox and then added a light and tomorrow night am going to work on that again to figure out how to eliminate shadows I don't want and maybe figuring out how to get some that I do want for certain affects.

Thanks so much for your help, Mark!

Denise

[ddt0725]

If I were you (and I absolutely suck in any shot with flashes involved) I would try to start from the basics. Learn how to use 1 on-camera flash properly.

I think that is what I need to do ...start over SLOWLY and build from there!

If you tell me what you want to achieve, I could join the learning experience and share experience with you? I have a ring flash and a 430 flash so I could do some off-camera flashing. Let me know what you think. We could work free of charge together.

That would be great! I will see how things turn out over the weekend and see if we can compare notes

Don't give up too soon, I know you can do it! This might lead us to some very interesting portrait photography lessons

Thanks, Jan! Much appreciated! I won't throw in the towel (or softbox) just yet ...but we'll see!

Denise

[ddt0725]

Wow, this is the first time the sites been working at the same time I'm able to go on it in quite awhile! So, first off I want to apologize for not responding to all ofthe comments above sooner! Second, I want to thank everyone for all of the suggestions you have given me! I am going to try each and every one of them eventually I should get this right!

It's late and my daughter and I just finished a few hours (yes, hours!) of shooting! I did start slow with just one light w/ a softbox high above her. Shadows were bad so I added another on a stand which helpedalot but for the life of me I could not get rid of the shadow on her neck from her chin no matter where I put the second light! Nor could I get anything even half as nice as the boys pictures above! My white background turned very gray.

She won't allow me to post any photos of her but if my other daughter comes over this weekend and we get a chance to do some shooting, I'll post a few of the results of those.

Thank you so much again ...I am very appreciative!

Denise

[MOF_Sydney]

Denise,


One thing you might try is to buy a big teddy bear. I use one to test a set up all the time. It sits very still and doesn't get impatient if I'm not happy and spend time fiddling around. When you can see the fur texture is exposed nicely and is quite sharp then you're close.

[Tom Wertman]

Denise,


Without seeing samples it's hard to give advice. So I will start at the basics of portrait lighting. My mentor suggested to me once that I study paintings of Rembrant for lighting technique. I saw right off that his paintings were different for male and female. For a male the lighting came from one side and a shadow was cast from the nose on the opposite side of the face. Just enough lighting would spill over to that side and create a small triangular shape of light on the cheek just below the eye. For females they were often lit up more from the front and the shape of light would be more like a butterfly spanning across both cheeks evenly. If you google Rembrant you will see what I mean. To think that he did this 400 years ago with candle light shows the pure genius that we follow today. I'm no expert but here are a couple of samples that illustrate this technique.


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[deltasun]

Denise, found this video a while back that may give you some ideas...


Portrait Single Light


Hope your trek gets better!

[ddt0725]

Denise, found this video a while back that may give you some ideas...


Portrait Single Light

Thanks for the link ...it was cool to actually see the different effects from the lighting.

Hope your trek gets better!

Well, tonight we took a number of shots again and ...woohoo!! It wentMUCH better! Everything worked right off the bat and no unwanted shadows anywhere!!Things aren't as good as many I've seen posted here but at least I feel like I'm on the right track! I used my Lumodi Beauty Dish this time with a diffuser sock over itand I didn't have it up as high on the stand as I didthe softbox last night. Just slightly higher than her. That is probably what helped with eliminating the chin shadow on her neck. I also used another speedlight on a stand to her left.

I wish she would let me post pics! []

Thanks so much to everyone for all there suggestions! Using a combination of all of them has really helped me tremendously!

Denise