Sean's Recent Shoot: Panos Galore

[Sean Setters]

I actually shot these next two shots before the one I posted above, but I've been holding onto them to give the bride and groom a reasonable amount of time to pick up their images before I started broadcasting them to the world.


Both were shot with the same basic setup: monolight left and right, with a 64" PLM with diffusion panel in place and a Large Softbox.






This is probably my favorite groomsmen picture yet. For this shot, I positioned the groom in the shade of a tree so that I could control the light completely. However, I let his buddies stand outside the shade of the tree (and well outside the range of the strobes with modifiers). I knew there would be harsh shadows on the groomsmen, but with a CPL on the lens I was able to cut the depth of field enough so that the groomsmen were well out of focus--and therefore, less of a draw to the viewer's eyes. Don't get me wrong, the groomsmen are an integral part of the image; their placement was exactly as I envisioned it. However, the lack of detail pulls the viewer right back to the groom where it's supposed to be.





We did several shots of the bride, but this ended up being my favorite. I thought this particular pose would work well for her, and was so sure of it that we shot it several times before I finally caught this one and said, "Yep, that's it. Let's move on." ;-)

[Sean Setters]

And for this particular shot,the setup was quite simple:


1 White Lightning Ultrazap, camera left, diffused by an 8"x36" gridded stripbox. I put a Botero black collapsible background along the wall behind her because we were in a small room and the light kept spilling onto the background.


EDIT: I chose a different version from the same shoot than I posted originally. I think I like this one better.

[Sheiky]

Nice one Sean. Very sharp portrait which suits her make-up I think.

[bouwy]

Wow Sean....Great work...Well done.


Wally

[Alan]

Sean, this studio shot is great. It intrigues me because with the black background, you were able to eliminate lighting up the background.


I've done shots like this, too, and occasionally run into too much light on the background. However, I might have really liked the shot, so what I've often done, rather than try to recapture the same pose (sometimes, that's hard to do), I'll use Photoshop to completely black out the background. I'll touch the lightest area with the Levels or Curves eyedropper, and it will make the entire background black. Of course, it might also affect the eye color or hair (sometimes a little, sometime more than that). In that case, I'll duplicate the image, and blacken only the top layer, then erase the critical parts of the top image away, revealing the correct eye/hair color.


Just something to consider if you get one of those keepers, and the background wasn't quite right. This works best with black or white backgrounds. It's more work, and I think it would be better to get the shot right, from the beginning. But, in a pinch, the layers method helps.


Alan

[Sean Setters]

Originally, I had planned to use a narrow enough aperture to eliminate light on the background (I thought the background was far enough back from the subject to allow for this). However, I found out that the stripbox I was using was reflecting enough off the walls to cause a slight amount of spilling onto the background (which happened to be a wall with a white door). My solution was to pull out an old black/white Botero collapsible background I have and place it against the wall. I had to be careful about framing the shot (or else I'd see where the edge of the collapsible background was), but overall it did what I wanted it to.

[Pieter]

Sean, do you agree that the studioshot would have better when you

[Sean Setters]

Sean, do you agree that the studioshot would have better when you'd used a longer lens? In my humble opinion, the women's nose gets a bit exaggerated. I can imagine that there was simply no room to use a longer lens.

I was using the 50mm/ f1.4 on a 1.6x crop body, so that's actually a pretty good focal length for general portraiture in my opinion (my 30mm Sigma, with the same framing, would not be ideal). I think the "exaggerated nose" you're seeing is the result of the lighting more than anything else. The fact that 1) I wasn't using a fill light and 2) my light was positioned in such a way that the shadow created stretched well beyond the crease of her nose, means that the beginning of the crease doesn't blend in smoothly with her cheek. Instead, the edge of the shadow is the perceived beginning of her nose, thereby making it look larger than it really is.

[Steve U]

Like the catch lights in her eyes Sean, nice image.

[Sean Setters]

For this next shot, I dragged out my largest softbox, the 70"x48" behemoth. I used the Genus Variable ND Filter so that I could shoot using a wide aperture in the middle of the day while still achieving a (relatively slow) max flash sync speed of 1/250 second. As I've noted, the Genus does add a significant warm color cast to the image. A global color correction can offset it entirely; however, I generally enjoy leaving a touch of warmth in the image. As I was facing the sun and couldn't use the lens hood with the Genus, I lost quite a bit of contrast in the original shot. I added more contrast in post.






And here's the setup shot: