FIONA DOWLING PHOTOGRAPHY

29 March 2013

Portrait Practice with Supplemented Lighting...

I've really been admiring the work of Irish portrait photographers, particularly Laurence J & Corin Bishop, who both practice commercially with great technical and aesthetic conviction.

I don't consider myself much of a portrait photographer, in fact, I tend to spread myself too thinly across multiple disciplines without much heed to a particular specialization - a jack of all trades and a master of none!

So, instead of lamenting the talents of others, I decided to get up off my behind and try it out for myself. It was simple; I sat near the window, snooted a lastolite flash also beside the window (with my tripod bag!!), turned the flash unit down to about 1/16 power, put my camera on a tripod and shot at about 35mm (24-70mm lens) on a shutter speed of 1/4, an ISO of 100 and an f-stop of 16-22. I dropped the shutter speed because I wanted to include a good deal of subtle ambient light.

The flash light was minimal, but just enough to add that extra pop of detail around the left side of my face. This enabled me to have more flexibility in raw in which I lightened the eye area and pupil further, along with a bit of colour adjustment.

So there it is, my attempt at portraiture with supplement flash lighting.