Gaffer Tape and Old T-Shirts to the Rescue

After taking a few shot of Krista on the couch, I noticed a lot of light reflecting off her eyeglasses. It turned out that she was facing four windows, each of which was letting in just enough light to be a nuisance. The windows had no curtains, so was I out of luck? Heck no! There's nothing gaffer tape can't fix. I put my camera down and asked Krista if she had any sheets or whatnot that could be used to cover up the windows. She pulled out some old t-shirts. I took three of them, and taped them (along with an extra posterboard) over the windows. Now that the stray light was no longer a nuisance, I picked up the camera and started shooting again.

Cramped Hands, Cramped Quarters

If you're tired of seeing Krista on the couch, I promise that this will be the last one in a long time. Cramped hands: By the time I took this photo, my right hand was cramping badly. I rented a heavy 70-200mm lens the morning before and took save-the-date/engagement photos for my friends (posts on the shoot coming soon). Then I ran around for several hours taking photos of Melia. By the time I started taking headshots of Krista, my hand was a wreck. Having carpal tunnel syndrome stinks. Cramped quarters: Krista was most comfortable, and therefore looked the best, on the couch. Unfortunately the distance from the couch to the opposite wall was only about 10 feet. Confined to this short distance, Krista also wanted shots of her head with her upper torso, so I had to keep the zoom lens close to it's widest focal length of 70mm (105mm on my small sensor DSLR). As a consequence, even at the lens's widest aperture of f/2.8, too much of the background (the dining room and kitchen) was in focus. If I had more space, say 15-20 feet instead of 10, I could have backed up 5-10 feet more, and set the lens to 150-200mm (225-300mm on my camera). At those focal lengths, the background would have appeared very blurry, instead of being just in focus enough to be a distraction. Looking back, what I could have done was increase the power of my flash, so that I could keep Krista properly lit, yet let the background stay dark (because the flash was not powerful enough to light the background). That way, even if the background was in focus, it would have been very dark relative to Krista, and therefore it would not have been a big distraction.

Lesson Learned: Make 'Em Comfy

Another big lesson I learned from shooting Krista was the importance of making the subject feel comfortable in front of the camera. I wanted Krista to look relaxed, i.e. I wasn't going for dramatic shots filled with tension. After some experimentation, I could see that she was most comfortable sitting on her couch (as opposed to standing next to a blank wall in the foyer or a mass of vines in the backyard) and wearing her eyeglasses. Lastly, I got her talking about her business and her family, and voila! She started to open up for the camera. If there was one downside, it was that she became so animated that it was difficult to keep her in focus! Next time I'll boost the ISO and stop down the lens to increase the depth of field. Or maybe I'll stop telling jokes. :-P

Post-Processing Saves The Day

Before

After

Carpal tunnel or no carpel tunnel, I needed do some serious post-processing work to lighten up the photos of Krista on the couch. There wasn't a lot of light coming into the living room. All I had was my flash shot through an umbrella and a not-very-reflective poster board positioned at camera right. To compound matters, the 70-200mm lens I rented "only" opens up to f/2.8. To further complicate things, Krista moved around a lot and I have shaky hands, so the exposure time had to be relatively brief. The ISO was set to 100, so I could have easily bumped that up to 400 without introducing too much noise. This would have pushed up my exposure by two stops. So why didn't I raise my ISO? Ummm...I forgot to do it. :-( Here are the nitty gritty details: Exposure: 105mm focal length, 1/320 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 2:47pm. Artificial lighting: Flash shot through umbrella at ~1/4 power, ~50mm zoom, 8:00 camera left, umbrella 3 feet away and 2 feet above subject, white poster board reflector propped up on couch at 3:00 camera right, 2 feet away from subject. Post-processing in Lightroom: +1 stops of exposure, increased fill light, sharpened, increased color temperature.

Lesson Learned: The Customer Is Always Right

The biggest lesson I learned from my headshot session with Krista was: Give the client what they want. When she asked me to take her headshots, I took it literally: her head filled every frame. I did this despite the fact that she gave me a sample image a week earlier in which the woman's head and the top of her torso were visible. When I showed her the photos on my camera's LCD screen, I could immediately see that she wasn't happy. She didn't want to just see her head. I asked her to show me the sample image again, so I could replicate it. Once I got on the same page with her, the photos were more to her liking. I learned a valuable lesson in humility: Give your customer what they want, not what you THINK they want. But what about artistic freedom? There's definitely still room for that. After you do what the subject wants, you're free to experiment. Change the lighting, change the scene, have fun, time permitting. At least I got one thing right: she wanted some silly and playful shots. As you can see, she was definitely silly!

Living Room Headshots

Exposure: 105mm focal length, 1/320 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 2:42pm. Artificial lighting: Flash shot through umbrella at ~1/4 power, ~50mm zoom, 8:00 camera left, umbrella 3 feet away and 2 feet above subject, white poster board reflector propped up on couch at 3:00 camera right, 2 feet away from subject. Post-processing in Lightroom: +1 stops of exposure, increased fill light, cropped, sharpened, increased color temperature. With Melia finally asleep, or at least not squirming too much in her crib, it was time to take some headshots for Krista's new website. We took some shots against a blank wall and took a bunch outside, but the best ones turned out to be on the couch in the living room. This is my favorite photo out of the "serious" poses. From giving the client what she wants to using gaffer tape and t-shirts to save a scene, I learned a lot of things from this shoot and will share my experience in the next few posts.

I'm Still Not A Photojournalist

As I've stated before, I don't have misgivings tricking my friends into doing what I want in front of the camera. Sometimes it's as simple as saying something funny to get them to crack a smile. In the case of Melia, I wanted her to stand in front of a dark set of drawers. She would have none of that, so I tossed my phone next to the drawers and she grabbed it and stood still long enough for me to take a few shots. Too bad she's out of focus...but I'll talk about that another time.In the photo above, I opened and closed the closet door until it caught her attention. Once she started paying attention to it, I knew I struck photo gold! You can see the rest of the photos here.