Headshots with Terisa
Shot at f/7.1 at 1/160th of a second at ISO 160 at 180mm. Lit with a Canon 430EX speedlite from camera left.
I recently did an outdoor photo shoot for my friend Terisa's website. Originally we were planning on going to San Francisco to a few different locations, but decided at the last minute to change the location to the Niles district in Fremont near where I live due to rainy weather. I was supposed to have an assistant help out, but because of the last minute change it didn't work out. I would have had them hold a reflector or a secondary flash had someone been there, but since the weather that day was overcast I made due with having a secondary flash on a lightstand that I was able to trigger wirelessly with my camera mounted 580EX flashlite.
When shooting outdoor portraits in overcast or cloudy weather, the white diffuse light works well and does not cast harsh shadows. The only drawback is that with everything soft and diffuse, photos can sometimes end up looking flat, so for this photo shoot, I decided to use small flashes to create more interesting light, and to introduce more depth and shadows. I had one flash attached to my camera that acted as a master flash that served as my key light, and also to create a small catchlight in Terisa's pupils, and a secondary 'slave' flash to act as a fill light. I shot with two lenses, my 24-105mm F/4L and my 70-200mm F4L IS. For the wider shots I went with the 24-105 when I wanted to show some of the interesting backgrounds around Niles. When I wanted to isolate Terisa more from the background, I switched to the 70-200.
Shot at f/4.0 at 1/200th of a second at ISO 100 at 67mm. Lit with a Canon 430EX speedlite from camera left.
After the shoot while Terisa and I had a quick lunch at the Nile Café, I downloaded the photos to my iPad to let Terisa view and rate the ones she like the best. Afterwards, I downloaded the photos to Aperture to organize the photos that I liked the most, then did some basic color grading and retouching. I usually start with an auto enhancement, then I go in and tweak things that I feel need a bit more work. Sometimes I'll adjust color balance to be a bit warmer, especially when shooting portraits. I think everyone looks better with warmer skin tones. To give the photos a bit more pop, I'll add just a bit of mid contrast. Finally, I'll use the retouch brush to fix and glaring skin blemishes and then run each of the final picks through Color Efex Pro and run a skin softening filter.
Shot at f/8.0 at 1/160th of a second at ISO 250 at 105mm.
Shot at f/4.0 at 1/200th of a second at ISO 100 at 191mm. Lit with a Canon 430EX speedlite from camera left.