Photography Project: Studio Portraits

 Yesterday we went to the photographic studio to take studio portraits. In the studio we used continuous lighting with a four light set up.  We took black and white and colour photographs and we used a black backdrop and a white backdrop.

We used the model Billie and a variety of poses for different composition.  Once I complete the shoot I created contact sheet on Photoshop.

We started with a high key set up on a white background.  The model was wearing colourful clothes and this should have been bright and sharp images. The first image I has chosen to show is this medium shot below

In this image the F-Stop is F4.5 so the aperture is wide open and the image should be clear and sharp.  With the lighting here the shutter is only 1/80 which is quite slow and actually the image is soft and really more light was needed to make this much sharper. I could have improved this image by over exposing slightly and this would have also increased the shutter speed or I could have added extra physical lighting or changed the ISO to 800 (however this would have added more noise, so not a good solution). 

We looked at lots of poses prior to the shoot and this shot by David Bailey has some similar ideas 

It is also a medium shot and uses rule of thirds, Bailey's image uses natural light and the hallway to frame the model.  In my shot there is a clean white background and the colour lifts the image to make it bright and clean.  In Baileys shot the domestic environment is more low key and the black and white changes the mood and feel of the image with the woman alone in the house.  My own image is very much like a classic fashion shot, the model's identity is unimportant.  Baileys shot is obviously far more compelling.   

The next shots I chose were these two sitting poses one in black and white and one in colour - this is partially so I can decide which works better as a shot and to think about the sharpness and lighting in the shots.  

The setting were exactly the same and again these images are soft and the shutter speed slow.  The exposure compensation is overexposing slightly and I think this really needed to be slightly less over exposed and more light added through physical lighting or I needed to be closer to the model to ensure that the shutter speed was higher.  I preferred the black and white but this does need work as I explained here. 

I looked at these shots by Bailey and the sitting pose here uses the bend of the leg and the arm to create the triangle shapes that really make this shot work.  The image is sharp and if my shot over less over exposed and had deeper shades and tones it would have looked more like this in terms of the look of the image. 
 

The next photograph was a seated pose on a box, this pose worked quite well and filled the frame with the triangular shapes and rule of thirds.

On the photograph the shutter was a little slow at 1/30 but there is no blur but it is a little soft.  It is slightly overexposed at +1 exposure compensation but overall this is okay - I would have changed the settings slightly to ensure the shutter speed was higher if I did this again  - I could have changed to Shutter priority.

The image above has some similarities in poses in the  seated position with her hand touching her hair and similar shapes to fill the frame 

The last one I will share here is another seated position , I liked the elegance of this pose, again a little soft but the positioning of the models arms and legs worked well to create a rule of thirds low key shot

The setting here are again a slow shutter making the image softer than I would like.  It was on -2 exposure compensation to ensure the blacks came out black and the shot was low key.  The high contrast of black and white is good and works well here.

Similar idea in this pose however this one is grey shades so the contrast is less stark but the full body shot with the legs taking centre stage and rule of thirds is what we were aiming for in our own shot. 

Reflection

As I was teaching, again I was just doing test shots so these all need adjustments and in a real shoot I would taken far more images and adjusted the setting further to ensure crisper cleaner shots overall. There is a good mixture of poses and low and high key shots here and as a practice it is satisfactory.  In my own work I will be taking far more time and care over the process as this will ensure better shots.