Portrait Demo: Siobhan Ridgway
(Basic Shot)
 

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(This is the 1st shot used from the Demo with Siobhan) These are shots from a demo in Portraiture Photo 220 class at City College.  Camera was a Canon 1Ds MkII with a Diffused Hasselblad/Zeiss 150mm lens set at f11

 Lights Used:
I wanted a soft, romantic feel to the shots so I kept the lighting very simple. 

The Key Light was a Softbox to simulate window light, and a white reflector panel for fill are the primary lights. 

I gave in to the modern styles with a hair/back light to help separate the subject from the background and add life to her hair.

Here is a shot taken by Heriberto Magdelena showing the lighting set up and my giving Siobhan some idea of what I wanted in the photo.

  1. Main/Key Light (Large Softbox
    set for Narrow / Rembrandt Lighting)
     
  2. Fill Light (White Reflector Panel)
     
  3. Hair/Kicker (10" reflector with diffusion gel)
     
  4. Background (No light on background)

 

1.  Original unretouched Shot From Camera.

There was a light flare in the original (because my lens hood came unglued) that was corrected tonally in the Raw Converter.  But it still is creating a slight color imbalance.

Because of the need to do some post editing anyway I decided to also use this shot to demonstrate some portrait/fashion style retouching ...
2.  Here is the result of color correcting and then some major softening using Photoshop tools including the "Dust and Scratches" and "Gaussian Blur."

Since Siobhan teaches fashion photography at SDCC it seemed appropriate to go for a more extreme "fashion" level of retouching.

Be sure to look at the other shots taken during this session.  One has been converted to B&W and the other used to simulate an old albumen print.

 

 

 

 

  

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