Portrait of a lady

Portrait of a lady.

A couple of days ago I had Abi in my studio located in Keresley End (north side of Coventry town centre). She isn't pro model, she is mother of beautiful 2.5 years old daughter, and my aim during our photo shoot was to create great beauty portraits of her.

Approach to the client.

In portraits shooting I use the same technique like in wedding photography. Usually, I don't work with professional models. It's mean I mostly work with people like you who doesn't know how to pose.

So, in my opinion is very important to keeps my clients relaxed during a session.

I give little advise what to do, the rest is up to my client. This freedom gives me an opportunity to shot images in natural face and body look... in you know what I mean :)

Some tech info.

Camera: Nikon D750

Lens: NIkon 24-70 f2.8

2 x studio lights (300W)

grey paper background 2.72m

post production: LR and PS

It was 2 lights setup. First one, behind me with white transparent umbrella. The role of this light was to give some wide light on all the stage. The second one was located on the right side of the model with strip softbox (160 x 35cm) with 4 cm grid on it, to achieve more direct light but still soft light. The effect you can see above.

Post production.

In the post process I used LR to balance tones and lift shadows up, and then I jumped to PS to remove some dirty things from the background and play little bit with Dodge and burn tool. I also used freq. separation technique to smooth skin a little bit.