Studio Photography

All posts tagged Studio Photography

Thursday ~ March 31, 2016

Posted by Dave Updegraff on March 31, 2016
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , .

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Happy Thursday!

Been a busy work week so far.  I’ve also been working on processing the head shots from the photo shoot I did last week.  I love taking portraits and I really enjoy working on them as well.  The more I photograph people the more I’m convinced that it is much easier to photograph wildlife then people. 🙂

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There are just so many variables in doing portrait photography.  I mentioned in an earlier post that I used to use a green screen for my portrait work.  It was a real struggle to get the skin tones correct.  I finally decided to shoot with a neutral gray background and that made all the difference in the world.  It is much easier to get the white balance correct and once that is correct the skin tones are much easier to get right.

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Then there is the lighting.  It is very easy to over power the portrait with too much light and by the same token you can create too many shadows with not enough light or with the lights in the wrong position.  I’m always looking for the right combination of lights to properly expose the portrait.

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Finally I want to help people look their best in the photograph without adding too much enhancement.  It is always a fine balancing act.

All told, I’m pretty happy with this session.  I will deliver the final product tomorrow and hope that everyone is happy with their photograph.  If they are then I consider it a great success.

That’s it for today.  Thanks for stopping by the blog.  Hope you enjoy your day and be careful.

Wednesday ~ February 19, 2014

Posted by Dave Updegraff on February 19, 2014
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , .

A horse searches for food

Happy Hump Day Wednesday! 

A rather abbreviated post today because as usual I am running way late.  I’ve been working on the portraits I took at the Maquoketa Chamber Gala – 2014 pretty solid for the last few days and I’m getting close to being done but still have some more work ahead of me.  Each portrait takes about 30 – 45 minutes of processing, enhancing, compressing, uploading and posting to the website so the subjects of the portrait can download them to their computer and either print them at home or send them to a print facility like Wal-Mart, Snap Fish or some other printer.

I have 28 completed and another 12 to do.  On the whole I am very pleased with the results.  Like so many things I do not shoot studio portraits often enough to develop a flow and style.  I love to shoot portraits but it is a lot of work for me because in many instances the lighting is not quite right or the subject has some article of clothing out-of-place or any number of a hundred other things that have to be fixed in post processing.

I tried a new lighting set up on this shoot that I had seen on one of the on-line courses I have taken.  It worked great as long as people stood exactly on the mark that I had taped to the floor.  I didn’t always get them to do that as there were people behind them impatiently waiting to get their portrait taken and so if one of the couple would move too close to the light I got really bad hotspots and those (for me anyway) are hard to correct.  Granted if I had taken my time and insisted on people standing in the right place and not take the shot until it is perfect that would solve a lot of problems.  But I like to accommodate people so it was more of a one, two your through and on to the next one. 😦

Wait a minute, didn’t I say this was going to be a short post?  The image above was shot last night on the way home.  I saw this guy kicking at the ground trying to find something to eat through all the snow.  The light was perfect from the setting sun so I pulled off the highway onto the shoulder and grabbed this image.  I’m going to get killed one of these days doing that.  🙂

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your midweek hump day and as always be careful.