Sometimes the first photograph in the headshot portrait session is a great image; I joked with Paul about this at the time. Shooting tethered to the Mac I saw the image and knew that if he had to leave there and then we would have a good strong portrait photo to fit the brief.
And I would forgive many for not realising that the two shots below were pretty much at opposite ends of our session and lit quite differently. The image to the left (and above) was in effect a single light, shot with a Bowens strobe and an Octobox 90 diffuser giving a reasonably soft and large circular light-source, the light was pretty much at ‘Rembrandt’ position. The Octo. was without its front diffuser though which adds a bit more bite. There was actually a second light firing to the back of the room from the left of the image, behind the subject, but it was set very low.
For the second image the main light modifier had been swapped to a smaller fully diffused beauty dish and the light to the left had been brought round to point at the subject, though still placed behind him; effectively opposing the main source. The beauty dish, although diffused is a smaller light source and creates a slightly ‘harder’ light although I have processed this image with a bit more contrast.
Between these two files there we also capture other portraits with a range of expressions and positions as well as further lighting setups. All of the images start as colour files but we tried these two as monos too.
At first glance they are similar but after a while the differences become more apparent.
Softbox VS Beauty-dish?
