portrait of a musician

bmktdan

My friend approached me about doing a portrait for his senior recital. He had a pretty clear idea of what he wanted, and I'm happy to say I could oblige him. He wanted black and white, so I didn't worry too much about the color balance, but I think it turned out pretty good anyway. We shot in an office-like environment, 10ft paneled ceiling and white walls (stucco behind him). He has a lamp with positionable arms behind him using 5 60W bulbs to create the glow at his back, and an additional lamp on the ground pointing up from the bottom left to prevent light falling off too much. He is lit by my Nikon SB-600 speedlight fired from the right about 5 ft away and bounced off of the ceiling. His position is near a wall to the left, so all the fill light on the left comes from the bounce off of the wall. White balance was left on auto, but the settings on my D70 are such that it would have been balancing for the flash.





The first photo is unprocessed, and my favorite of the series. It looks pretty good in black and white, too. The second was the one he chose, a little darker with more contrast. A slight gaussian blur has been applied to the background to help deemphasize the texture of the wall, as well as a little bit of dodging and burning in a few areas to bring out details and adjust the background lighting.

Fun little project. We were set up and done shooting in about 20 minutes.

I would love to hear some critiques.

wxwax

Very creative, bm. I like the idea of creating a pool of light behind him. And nice way to use the available resources.

Like you, I prefer the color image. One thought: to me, the left side of his face is a tad too dark in this kind of a shot. Some kind of reflector might have helped on that side. The lighting temperatures are interesting - the warm light behind him, the cool light on his face. Not sure what I think of that.

For some reason, his face in the the B&W seems soft. Why would that be? Again, I find the left side a wee bit too dark.

Thanks for sharing your techniques with us, I suspect folks could learn from your ingenuity.