December Photo Meetup Group

A few months back some of us here in Madison started up a little photographer’s meetup group.  The idea being to get together and learn from each other, and try new stuff.  We meet once a month, second Wednesday of the month.  (We welcome anyone to join us, from beginner to pro!)  We’ve done one outdoor shoot, when the weather was warmer, and the last couple of months have discussed software, mainly Lightroom and Photoshop.  This month we played around with some studio lighting and discussed portraiture, and expressions in particular.  I’ve posted some samples from the night below, along with what we did….and were thinking….regarding lighting.

This first image….well, I’m not exactly sure what happened.  For some reason the light didn’t fire at full power, and so the image is somewhat underexposed.  The main light is a rather large softbox, camera left.  The light is “feathered” away from the subject, i.e. it’s not pointing directly at Jennifer, it’s pointing from left to right, and we’re just using what “falls off” the side of the softbox to light her.  This gives a bit softer light, and more controllable, than if the light were pointing directly at her.  But, as I said, the light didn’t fire at full power on this one…..but, I really like it.  Don’t you love it when you screw up, and it turns out better than if you knew what your were doing!!  🙂  It’s a bit dark and moody, but it’s one of my favorites.  (Background here is white cloth, but without much light falling on it, it goes dark)

This next photo is the real thing.  Main light is the same as before, large softbox camera left.  We’ve also added a fill light behind the camera.  The fill light brings up the lighting on the left side of her face (camera right).  She looked away for a second, and I took the picture.

 Tyler brought up “three point lighting” (he uses it when he’s shooting some of the furniture models he designs in the studio at school), so we decided to play with that a bit, and it’s easier to see with a dark background, so we switched to a dark navy background.  With this type of lighting we’ve added a third light that is camera right, and behind the subject, but pointing back towards the subject.  You can see the effect below, on the right side, on Jennifer’s face and hat.  If you shoot against a dark background without this third light (a separation light, or “kicker” as it’s called sometimes), your subject, especially if they have dark hair, or are wearing dark clothing, tends to blend into the background.  (See John’s photo below)

At some point earlier, to help “lighten” things up a bit, Jennifer had brought out some props that she uses from time to time.  You can see some of them by clicking here to see her blog post on the Meetup.  I’ll let you look at her site to see those, and just post this one of Ron.  You can see here we’ve made the third light (the kicker) very subtle.  It’s there lighting his left check (camera right), but is mostly just keeping that side of his face from blending into the background.  I thought this pose, and look, called for a little “harder” processing than the previous photos.  I could also see a bit of his eyes in the original, but retouched them out in Lightroom and prefer the blackness of the glasses.

John was next.  He was wearing a black shirt, so that made for a nice challenge in trying to get some separation on the shirt and background, and still getting good lighting on him.  We didn’t quite have it here, but this is close.  We need just a bit more light on the left side of his face (camera right), you can see how we’re just about losing the left side of his head into the background….but this photo works for me.  It doesn’t bother me that we can’t see everything.

And Tyler was next, I think the lighting is just about perfect here, I would have liked to have added a tiny bit of light from above, but we didn’t have any more lights.  First image is a crop from the original.

And here is the original.  I really like being able to see his hands for some reason.  I’ve found shooting seniors this past fall, I like seeing peoples hands in the photos, so I’ve tried to do that more often.  This one has a really formal, classic look to it.

So, you see what you’re missing!??  We have fun, AND end up with some pretty cool portraits!!  If you’re interested in coming, you can just use the Contact form at the link at the top of the page, and I can add you to our email list.  I have no idea what we’ll be doing in January (suggestions are welcome).  Also, if you have questions  on what’s posted above, or comments, I’d LOVE to to hear them.  Just click the “Post a comment” link below.