…that you can’t get blurry backgrounds with an iPhone? And I don’t mean fake backgrounds, like with a newer iphone with two lenses, either. Here:
Just…
That’s all. Simple, really. Get close and your background is comparatively far, so it gets blurred.
For most photography, I recommend keeping post work to a minimum. Quick crop, perhaps a small exposure adjustment: done. For some types of photography, like press photography, adjustments of any other type are forbidden.
But for some, they’re necessary. Even an iPhone product shot like this, of my Glycine watch, needed some TLC:
That’s one of my watches. Click on it to see the full version. And notice how perfect it looks. No dust at all, no smears or scratches, great contrast, and so on. All watches always look hyper-perfect in all ads.
And that’s because they’re hyper-edited. Things like focus stacking, and expensive editing.
In mine, above, I removed every speck of dust using the healing tool in Lightroom. Then I increased local clarity and decreased exposure on the watch face. I added a tad of sharpening and then noise reduction. And although small, the effects of these edits are important.
The good news: most of these edits are easily doable in Lightroom. For a commercial advert, you need Photoshop, but for everything else, Lightroom is fine.
Why you use a Shampooey Goodness light… from today’s corporate shoot. With, and without.. I am sure you can see the difference.
QED. You need that hair light, and you need to aim it very accurately, so as to avoid hitting the face or shoulder. You need to use a snoot.
Here’s a few samples from another family shoot I just did, of a friend (an ex student) and his family:
Fall is a great time for these portraits—in spite of the cold.
A few notes on a shoot like this:
To see what I mean: this is with flash:
…and this is without:
I encourage you all to have family portraits done. Because they last, and it’s the only time travel we do. You’ll be delighted later to have them, and the extra few hundred dollars are a small price compared to that.
I taught a special flash workshop over the past two days, at Sheridan College. Seven students, great crowd.
Here, a few images:
Next, a one flash portrait. Yes, you can do some great stuff using just one flash. The flash was fitted with a Honl Photo grid – without that, it could not have worked. Fired by pocketwizards. This student looks like Queen Nefertiti, we decided:
Funny, aunt and niece, who, contrary to what you might think looking at this image, both have a great sense of humour:
And finally, me, by one of the students. A standard four light portrait:
About this portrait:
And finally the easiest shot. Now I warn you, the sample below was shot from the back of my camera with my iPhone, and then further mangled by Facebook, so do not look at the quality. Look at the idea instead.
So simple. One flash, located behind the subject, aimed at the backround. And a part Harvey Weinstein lookalike in the foreground.