Rare Selfie Time...

It's not often that photographs get taken of me, mostly because I am always behind the camera. Today, just for once, I wanted to try out the portrait set-up that I have been shooting with the plastic head but using a real human head for a change and the only available (read "willing") sucker human at home today was me. So for better or worse you get to see my scruffy face today... 😱

First shot is a colour version of my scruffy face, second is the whole set-up but with the plastic head in my place, third shot is a 100% crop to show the totally insane resolution of the D850, and finally a B&W version of my scruffy face. B&W doesn't make me look any better though...

Colour version

Set-up shot

100% crop

B&W version

Final Fun With the Plastic Head (for now)

 Ok, just one more post featuring the world's most patient head-shot model. At least for now... it has been fun though.

As before I used my D750 and three Speedlights controlled wirelessly. The only change was using an Elinchrom softbox for the rear fill instead of the reflector I used before. 

Just two pics (plus one bonus pic...), the final image and a pull-back shot. You get the picture.

In the "bonus" pic below I just substituted some Christmas lights in the place of the Speedlight powered gobo used above to provide a somewhat sparkly background for a change.
 

Another Day Another Portrait Setup...

Another day another portrait setup in my little studio. This time my main light is an SB-910 shot through a gridded 95cm octobox, fill light is an SB-700 shot through a gridded 18cm reflector and the background light is an SB-600 shot through a gobo to provide a single ray of light. All speedlights are controlled wirelessly via Nikons CLS system useing an SU-800 Commander unit mounted to a D750. 

I really like the quality of the light from the octobox, it is large enough to give a nice fall-off of light around the face, has two diffusers to soften and even up the light and doesn't show any hotspots anywhere on the face.

Final image

Pull-back shot so you can see where the lights are placed

Three Light Portrait

 The plastic fantastic headshot model agreed to sit for another portrait session today (well she didn't say no...) and I decided to go with three lights this time around. The main light is an sb700 shot through reflector with grid attached from camera right. Fill light is an sb600 also through a reflector with grid attached. The background light is an sb910 shot through a gobo and fresnel lens system from MagMod. All taken with a D750 and 24-120mm f4 lens at 120mm & aperture priority f5.6. The lights were all controlled and fired wirelessly via an su-800 Commander unit.

The first image is the final shot, followed by a pullback set-up shot and then main and background light individually just to show the effect each light has on the image, with final shot to show the fill in the shadows.

Final image.