My Wife

I thought I'd start out with a portrait of my wife that I took two days ago. She's so patient with me and always willing to take an active part in my photography, including coming up with new ideas and giving honest good feedback. I also thought this would be a good start as it is a very simple one light shot. I've included a setup shot below to make it clear how the picture was captured and I will try to do this in as many posts as I can.

The lighting is a Nikon SB800 flash fired through a white umbrella. I used a light stand positioned at the bottom corner of the bed. With a boom attached to the top, I was able to position the flash slightly to the left and just out of the top of the frame, pointing down at her face. If you do not have a stand with a boom you could just as easily have a friend hold the flash and umbrella in the correct position. This can also be easier as it is very quick to have them adjust the lighting but you must work quickly as it can get very tiring to hold!
The white sheet underneath her did a great job of bouncing light back up at her face and filling in all of the shadows. I took the shot with my 50mm lens at 1/250th, f5.6. Without the white sheet, another reflective source or a fill light would have been needed to stop the shadow areas from going completely black.
My biggest problem with this shot was the space that I was constricted in. Getting Siobhan in the frame, along with the headboard with such little working room meant that I had to be quite careful, It's also very important to keep any lines in a background straight (see the vertical line at the left of the headboard.) There is another beam that goes across the top but it would have been impossible to include both the horizontal and vertical lines without one of them being crooked because of the close working quarters. So it was important to me to keep at least one of them out of every photograph I took, as well as making sure that the included one was straight. I'm always very fussy with lines, if they're not straight then the photo just looks a little odd to me, I always notice it immediately.
You really don't need to have a lot of equipment to get good quality photographs or to get creative. A simple reflective surface like a large piece of white cardboard or in this case, the sheet, effectively gives you two light sources to work with with very little or no extra expense. A collapsible reflector is a fantastic tool to have around as they have multiple reflective surfaces to choose from and pack down nice and small but that is something for a different post.

There is very little Photoshop work done in this photograph. Her feet came out a little yellow which I immediately found distracting so I toned that down a little. I also used the burn tool at a very low exposure to darken the jumper down and I took a bit of colour out of her jeans as they drew attention to the back of the frame more than I liked, I want people to immediately focus on her face and then take in the rest.


Here is another shot from the series. This is a very simple lighting setup that yields a very nice result for what it is. It really shows how effective it is to get your flash off of the top of your camera!

If anyone has any questions or comments at all please leave them below. I'd love to hear from you!