Amy Headshot

weepete

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A very rare portait shot for me. In this case my daughter wanted a headshot done for her student ID, and liked the one I did last year for her. So I set up some of my studio equipment and go to try out my new beauty dish.

I do find people a very difficult thing to photograph, and my lighting technique is definatley on the basic side. So this is me very out of my comfort zone but we had a bit of fun.

I'd quite like some soft C&C on this, just to see if there's anything I can improve, particularly around lighting.

Shot with flash on 1/2 power, A 16" beauty dish with diffuser just above the camera and angled down about 30 degrees, a large white reflector camera left with a bit of ambient from a large window in front and half closed blind with her doing her own hair and makeup. Camera was my 5DmkIV with a 50mm @5.6 and 1/20th sec ISO 400

Amy Headshot 2020 by wee_pete, on Flickr
 
Have your lovely model move away from the BG so as to avoid her shadow there.

The little bit of hair on the left should be either increased or hidden completely.

Can't see anything else. Good shot.
 
I think her left cheek doesn't match the shape of her right. I think that is because of the lighting.

I do not mind what is called the "attachment shadow".

You must be so proud. She is a lovely young woman.
 
I think that the beauty dish gives a very nice light in this situation, but I think it would look better if it were perfectly symmetrically applied to the features of her face, so that her cheekbones would receive equal light and would improve the symmetry of her face.

It looks to me as if the light was gently sweeping across her face. I think it would be better if the light were perfectly hitting her square in the face and casting a very slight Shadow directly under her nose
 
I find shooting portraits equally difficult. As a photojournalist, we typically don't do these kinds of shots with the exception of the ever-present "mug shot". Most of the portraits I make tend to be environmental or "subject oriented". Give me a good old fashion car wreck and I can shoot circles around it, but portraits, not so much. That being said, I think you did a wonderful job on this one and she is a lovely young woman. As a college professor, I wish her much good luck in her studies.
 
When I was a full-time studio portrait photographer in the 1980s we used photogenic machine company lights and our standard main light was a 16 inch, deep dish parabolic reflector with a layer of frosted mylar diffusion material over it. Our fill light was the same. We used a 400- watt second "skylighter" to light the-top of people's heads.

I can see by your catchlights exactly where you had your main light placed.
I have probably made 3,000 single person portraits using similar lighting gear.without a doubt the most critical factor in a single person portrait like this is positioning a relatively small main light at _exactly_ the right height and angle. If you take just the main light and move it through an arc on the floor you will be amazed and how much just one to four inches will affect the lighting result. I think that the single best accessory you can have is a rolling base light stand so that you can easily move the light through an actual Arc and preview exactly what a specific placement does.

If you just simply position the light and begin shooting,you often will not have the ideal placement of the main light.

Rather than doing a reshoot, I think perhaps you should consider reducing the highlights on her left cheekbone. That will have a considerable effect on how the shape of her cheek bone is perceived.
 
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Pete, I'm not in a position to offer crit but if you took a portrait of my daughter like that, I'd be more than happy with it and so would she.
 
Have your lovely model move away from the BG so as to avoid her shadow there.

The little bit of hair on the left should be either increased or hidden completely.

Can't see anything else. Good shot.

Great spot Designer, I'll see what I can do about that little bit of hair and keep an eye out for that in the future. I'd have loved to get her further away from the background too. Our house isn't big so quie limited space wise, had about 6 feet of room for this one!. If we can get the right day I might be able to get a background set up or I might be able to talk nicely to my rents and borrow a bigger room for a day.
 
I think her left cheek doesn't match the shape of her right. I think that is because of the lighting.

I do not mind what is called the "attachment shadow".

You must be so proud. She is a lovely young woman.

Thanks Derrel, yep I've very proud of her. Lighting isn't my strong point and though I've got a little bit of kit I very rarely use it. She's really good with makeup, so we've been discussing doing some shoots to show off her skills. I need to up my game to do it justice I think!
 
I think that the beauty dish gives a very nice light in this situation, but I think it would look better if it were perfectly symmetrically applied to the features of her face, so that her cheekbones would receive equal light and would improve the symmetry of her face.

It looks to me as if the light was gently sweeping across her face. I think it would be better if the light were perfectly hitting her square in the face and casting a very slight Shadow directly under her nose

Thanks, that's very useful. I want to try some kind of clamshell lighting with her as well as somepoint. I'll definatley give that a go next time. The beauty dish was indeed slightly off center camera right.
 
I find shooting portraits equally difficult. As a photojournalist, we typically don't do these kinds of shots with the exception of the ever-present "mug shot". Most of the portraits I make tend to be environmental or "subject oriented". Give me a good old fashion car wreck and I can shoot circles around it, but portraits, not so much. That being said, I think you did a wonderful job on this one and she is a lovely young woman. As a college professor, I wish her much good luck in her studies.

Thanks Mark, I'm more a landscape and widlife guy so this is dramatically different to what I'm used to. She's starting Uni this year studying primary school teaching and french. I'm pretty happy with the result and I think I've managed a shot that's better than your standard cell phone headshot but I know there's room for improvement on my side here!
 
When I was a full-time studio portrait photographer in the 1980s we used photogenic machine company lights and our standard main light was a 16 inch, deep dish parabolic reflector with a layer of frosted mylar diffusion material over it. Our fill light was the same. We used a 400- watt second "skylighter" to light the-top of people's heads.

I can see by your catchlights exactly where you had your main light placed.
I have probably made 3,000 single person portraits using similar lighting gear.without a doubt the most critical factor in a single person portrait like this is positioning a relatively small main light at _exactly_ the right height and angle. If you take just the main light and move it through an arc on the floor you will be amazed and how much just one to four inches will affect the lighting result. I think that the single best accessory you can have is a rolling base light stand so that you can easily move the light through an actual Arc and preview exactly what a specific placement does.

If you just simply position the light and begin shooting,you often will not have the ideal placement of the main light.

Rather than doing a reshoot, I think perhaps you should consider reducing the highlights on her left cheekbone. That will have a considerable effect on how the shape of her cheek bone is perceived.

Thanks again mate, I found exactly what you describe here, a little movement in the BD caused a dramatic change in the lighting. Took me a good while just to get lighting that didn't look too flashy and we went through quite a few minor variations of light positions. I hadn't realised quite how critical the light position would be.

It's a major fashion trend to use that shiny makeup she's got on her cheeks so that's also probably not helping here. I'll see if I can reduce that in post and take your advice on light placement. I'll try and be a bit more exacting in future.

The good news is we had fun, she seemed to quite enjoy it so I'm sure would be up for another shoot.
 
Pete, I'm not in a position to offer crit but if you took a portrait of my daughter like that, I'd be more than happy with it and so would she.

Thanks mate, I think we are both pretty happy with the result. I'm a bit of a perfectionist and always looking to improve. My approach to studio lighting is a bit more luck than skill so I'm sure there are little things I could do to elevate the shot on my side and get it really refined. She's keen to record some of her makeup, so hopefully we'll be able to do a fewmore shoots in the future.
 

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