I had a laugh when I saw this picture. Once awhile, we’re allowed to be dissatisfied with how things are going at a shoot. Lighting’s off, angle’s off, things are not working as I’ve envisioned it. And so on and so forth. Liz took a picture of me at this particular instance when I felt that. I like this portrait..it’s emotional. Deep in thought and sulking a bit, I looked straight into the camera looking for answers and she took this picture. What was not working was the tight angle at this spa and beauty center, which had a lot of reflective surfaces where my lights could be seen everywhere.

The place was beautiful, so I wanted to bring out the character and the intrinsic designs so thoughtfully incorporated here. We were shooting a series of portraits of four employees for an advertisement. So in this place, the employee would pose with the different chemicals that are mixed for each customer. Pretty neat stuff considering it’s open for everyone to see and admire. In this shot, I used one key light to camera right, with a softbox, and one highlight to camera right also but behind the subject. Of course it didn’t work out. In the final shot, the highlight was left outside the room shooting through the glass. The final shot really worked.

We had a few rooms to shoot the portraits and one of them was a room designed to serve the guests tea. Liz was of course the lighting model of the day and here’s the test shot. One key light in a softbox and one highlight behind shooting through and umbrella, and making sure the vertical strips of wood had enough light to differentiate it from the back while throwing a bit of light on her. The final image was from a slightly different angle but an even stronger image.

What’s that blurry thing in front? This is what it looks like under the same lighting, taken by Liz

Image taken by Liz

Will post the images after the ad is released.