 |
To be a good portrait photographer, it helps to have a sense of imagination or vision, a sense of composition, at times a sense of humor. It also helps to be able to interact with your subjects, and to be able to maintain that interaction while juggling the technical aspects of the camera work and the lighting production. It is therefore crucial to know and be comfortable with your equipment, both camera and lighting, so that you can focus on being creative while working with your subjects.
|
While it helps to have an assistant (or two) help you with the technical aspects of a portrait shoot, it is even more important to be able to work with straightforward, easy-to-use gear. Digital cameras have helped to take a lot of the guesswork out of photography, particularly in portrait sessions, and once you are comfortable with a good digital camera, it becomes almost like an extension of yourself. Likewise, a simple, dependable, continuous lighting set-up can save you hours of frustration you might otherwise experience with more complex strobe lighting systems.
In this lesson, we used an Olympus E-1 digital camera, two soft box lighting kits and a reflector to illustrate several different ways to go about lighting and shooting a living room portrait.
(Most images can be clicked for an enlarged view.) |
;)