The topics were:
- The basics of portrait lighting
- Results of the B&W shooting session at the windmill
- Examples of portrait photography
The first photo course evening of the new year will be dedicated to taking portrait photos of various models. We will work in teams consisting of a model, a photographer and an assistant (side note: I think we will have to take a lot of water with us. The models will be lighted with continuous lights which give off a lot of heat, as well as light).
Our teacher gave us some examples of various lighting positions:
- full face
- 1/3 face (one side of the face lit, the other one in shadows)
- butterfly
- profile
- Rembrandt
The Rembrandt lighting technique is a very interesting one. As you can see in a lot of Rembrandt paintings, a model can be lit in such a way that a small triangle (of light) appears below one of the eyes.
Various camera positions in relation to the model were discussed. When the camera is higher than the eye level of the model, the model can look more humble / smaller. When the camera position is below eye level, the model can look dominant / more important.
Because this evening coincided with large amounts of snowfall in Holland, quite a few students did not make in time and missed the explanation of the lighting positions. Do not worry about that. The photographer David Ziser has released two excellent video tutorials on this topic.
The first tutorial is called 'Rembrandt Lives - Classical Views of the Face' and explains the various positions of the face in relation to the camera. Scroll down to the end of the blog post to see the video.
The second tutorial is called 'Rembrandt Lives Part 2 - Classical Lighting' and explains how to light the face to add detail and depth.
David uses a lot of wedding photos, since he is a wedding photographer. But his techniques can of course be applied to other situations as well.
Results of the B&W shooting session at the windmill
It was very interesting to see what photos each student made. Some had abstract photos, others played with light and shadow.
The group made a selection of my photos and grouped them together:
Examples of portrait photography
To give us examples of several portrait photo styles, we took a look at photos from the following photographers:
OK, I am off to take some snow and landscape photos!
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