Have speedlights, will Portrait...

The best way to improve your portrait photography is to invest in a Speedlight... or two, and a wireless trigger system to be able to fire those flashes off camera. I use a cheap but reliable Phottix Strato system combined with two Nikon Speedlights and it has never let me down. Just make sure to have the batteries fully charged before you start and keep some spares handy too.

In this shot I have a Nikon SB700 to camera right shooting through a 105cm white umbrella set to 1/16 power and behind the model I have a Nikon SB600 on 1/64 power with no light modifier at all. My camera is at 1/200s, f2.8, and iso 200, handheld. I hate trying to shoot portraits on a tripod preferring to be able to adjust to my subjects movements freely.

Keeping the Lighting Simple for a Street Portrait

When you have a lot of lights and like to work in a studio set-up utilising at least three of those lights for portraits (sometimes more...) then it can be very liberating to get out into the open air and do some portraits on the streets of LA (affectionate term the locals give to our small town of Landskrona) and be restricted to using a simple single Speedlight set-up. I have a Nikon sb700 on a light stand shooting through an umbrella to camera right and a little higher than the subject. Everything is on fully manual for consistent control. The sb700 was set to 1/64th power and triggered wirelessly with a Phottix trigger system. Camera was set at 1/200s, f2.8, iso 400 and I used my favourite portrait lens, the Nikon 85mm f1.8. For good measure, here is a pull back shot of the scene showing the light firing:

A Portrait using Window Light balanced with Off Camera Flash

First off, my apologies for not posting a whole lot over the last few months, I have been busy with several new directions in my professional life and there just never seems to be time!

Today I had the pleasure of photographing my good friend Murtaza who needs a few portrait photographs for a series of interviews, websites and a news channel to display on-line and via television. He specialises in ground breaking techniques in treating drug addiction and it seems a lot of people are interested in what he has to say on the subject!

For the session I travelled light and did the "strobist" thing with two Nikon Speedlights balanced with ample beautiful soft window light streaming in through a large window. The window is to the left of camera, an SB-700 at 1/64th power is shooting through a large white umbrella to camera right and elevated somewhat higher than the subject, and finally an SB-600 at 1/16th power is shooting against the wall behind subject from it´s position on the floor. Of course I used my favourite go to lens for portraits, the Nikkor AF-S 85mm f/1.8 G which is a class piece of glass! The pic above was taken wide open at f1.8.