In this days of social isolation, what do you do? Me, I get creative. With flash, of course. And apart from cropping and, in some cases, adjustment to vibrance and presence, it’s straight out of camera (“SOOC”) – it’s what you do once you know flash. Which, incidentally, I teach.
Here’s the most recent days:
I hope you, too, dear reader, are keeping busy with something creative. Regardless of what our governments regards as “essential”, we cannot live on bread alone.
And above all, stay well.
The rest of my self portraits are posted elsewhere, but here’s day 13. At some stage I will re-post all of them here. Day 13 is “making do”. Sleep, shower, shave, etc, TV, sleep, repeat. What else is there to do?
For today’s portrait I use a prop. And the camera is set to f/16, 100 IUSO, 1/250 sec. The light is a single speedlight fitted with a Honl Photo 1/4″ speed grid. Took about 30 seconds to do this portrait. Now the rest of the day…
An ancient Latin saying. Obviously ancient if it’s Latin.
And a self portrait, obviously not ancient, unless perhaps my age puts me into that category.
Michael Willems
Oh vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Manual focus on an object that is sitting where I will be. Then use the timer shutter release. Camera on a tripod. or on a table.
So is this a “vanity” photo?
No, it is more of a storytelling photo. Photos can be more interesting if they imply that there is clearly a story behind the photo, and it is not a straightforward one like “happy clown”.
If you are on my course: much more coming. If not: get the books, come back here, and keep reading. Enjoy!
From Hopper to Leibovitz, hotel rooms have always been a fascinating setting for art portraits.
I portrayed myself in a hotel in Timmins, Ontario, Wednesday morning, evoking feelings of these prior artists, but especially, creating with light. Straight out of the camera.
If I say so: my best self portrait. Ever.
Click to see larger:
I did this in my suite in the Timmins Day’s Inn. I was alone and I used:
Camera prefocused and using its self timer. This took me only a couple of attempts to get right.
The main light: a flash connected with a Flashzebra cable and mounted with a ball head onto a clamp, clamped to a chair. Note the second flash sitting in the background.
And no, the name “selfie” doesn’t do it justice, does it?
Here, another self portrait: “self with shadow”.
I want to point out a few compositional things about this image:
As you can see, even in a simple two-light portrait, some thought is applied to make it good. And some trial and error. Note that some post cropping and rotating is OK if you cannot get it right in the camera.
One more tonight:
Here as you see I have desaturated red and orange slightly using “HSL” in Lightroom. Less drama, to, since I am now using an umbrella rather than a grid. So the umbrella casts light onto the background.
These self portraits are fun and I urge you to do one, using off-camera light (flash or natural).
I recently, while preparing for a commercial shoot, took a few self-portraits. Including this one:
Michael Willems, Photographer (self portrait)
As always, click to see it large. (You really do need to see this one at original size to see the full effect.)
To do a portrait like this, I did the following – and I thought it might be useful for me to share the thought process:
Finally, in post-production I added some film grain. This is one of Lightroom 3’s Develop module’s “Effects”, and it is one I really like. Tri-X film, anyone?
I am about to set up the same setups for Saturday’s workshop. Deciding on lighting is a photographer’s major job!
As I said before, you can use just about any lens for portraiture.
But there are certain guidelines to obey. Like: when using a wide lens, put the subject small in the centre. Then optionally crop.
To illustrate. This is a 50mm portrait of me just now:
Michael Willems by Michael Willems (50mm)
That is just about OK. Any wider and it would be too wide, and for a portrait like that, ideally I would like to zoom in more, to maybe 70mm, and then to stand back.
But perhaps you cannot do that because there is no space. Or you want the environment in the image.
Fine, you can use a wide angle lens. But be careful. If you put your subject too close, the nose will be too large and the face distorted. And if you put your subject near the edge of the image, it will be distorted also.
Look at this 35mm portrait:
Michael Willems by Michael Willems (35mm)
Not good. But what if we put the subject smallish in the centre?
Michael Willems by Michael Willems 35mm, subject in centre)
That is fine, And optionally, then we crop:
Michael Willems by Michael Willems (35mm, cropped)
By cropping, we have now essentially made the 35mm lens into a longer lens. But even without cropping, it is the fact that the subject is in the centre and not very big that makes the composition fine.
I can think:
Michael Willems by Michael Willems (35mm, cropped)
I hope this brief example helps dispel the thought that you “must” have an 80-135mm lens for portraits!
And to finish, a silly image.
Michael Willems by Michael Willems (35mm, silly)
Yes, I can be silly.
Finally, a question for you to try your hand at, at home. Can you figure out how I lit these images?
A few words to get you started on studio portrait setups.
When you are shooting in a “studio” (i.e. controlled) setting, your camera settings might be, as I recently pointed:
Why as small as f/8?
Because lower aperture numbers than 5.6 can give you too selective a depth of field; and with most lenses, higher numbers than f/8 create diffraction, meaning slight blurriness. If you like sharp, stick to f/8 or perhaps f/5.6.
You also use f/8 or similar because studio lights are powerful. (Someone the other day searched for “how to shoot wide open with studio light” – often, the lights are so bright even on their lowest settings that the only way to do that is to use a neutral density filter on your lens).
And lenses?
For portraits, I use 50-200mm. Smaller focal length (like 50-70 on a full frame camera) makes a woman’s body smaller (if I shoot at head height). Larger makes the nose smaller, but can make the body slightly bigger. I.e. larger gives you no distortion, but sometimes ever-so-slight distortion is exactly what you want. My favourites are:
But you can keep it simple! A Canon Digital Rebel or Nikon D90 with a 50mm f/1.8 lens, for instance, will allow you to take great razor-sharp studio portraits. It’s all about the light!
How do I take one of these with my new 7D?
I set the camera on a tripod and use pocketwizards to fire one flash into an umbrella. One flash gives me that severe look, but to slightly lessen that, I have a reflector on the other side (camera left). I used a 35mm f/1.4L lens on the 7D, meaning an effective lens length of about 50mm. The “Nifty fifty”!
I set my camera to 100 ISO – best quality, and background light does not upset the shot. And I am in manual mode, at f/8 (enough DOF) and 1/125th second. I use autofocus where the camera selects a focus point, This time. I will – because as the subject I cannot see what I am doing.
Finally, I use the timer of course. So I can press the shutter while I hold my hand out; then sit down as the camera beeps.
And then I check: sharp enough? Nice graduated tones from dark to light? Catchlights in the eyes? Check!