Yesterday I had my first practice session in my new photo room. I simply wanted to see how light reacted so just took some selfies and played around – getting hands on and trying things is always the best way to learn. I haven’t done much editing to this picture, it was just a practice, so don’t look too closely especially at my turkey neck 😉

My overhead, moveable, dimmable spotlights were brill. They really bring out catchlights in hair and made lovely highlights on my shoulders. I tried a spotlight behind me but it produced way too harsh a rim light for this kind of picture.

Soft light such as that from a candle works really well on older skin and is particularly good for disguising wrinkles. I also used 2 continuous lights with rectangular soft boxes, both set to ‘warm’ light which is yellow in colour. The light to my right was at 50% brightness and the one to my left was a fill light set to just 10%.

I realised that all of my printed backdrops have had their day, so really need to invest in some new ones. I added a texture over the background in this image in Photoshop as the blue backdrop I’d chosen didn’t do the portrait any favours.

In terms of editing, I’ve added a vignette to draw the eye towards the subject, brightened my eyes which get lost in low light shots like this (although I haven’t gone to the bother of removing any of the 3 catchlights!), warmed the skin up with a bit more red in the shadows, added some contrast to the face to bring out bone structure and did a little dodging & burning to bring out lips and eyes. It’s not like I’m going to use this picture for anything so I couldn’t be bothered faffing with it any more than that.

It’s always tricky to know how to position hands in portraits. If you’re not careful they can look like clumping great shovels and it took 3 or 4 tries before I found a hand position I was happy with.

I so enjoyed having a play around in my new space and have several ideas for photos in mind which I’m dying to try out – one in particular I’m very excited about so I can only hope it works in reality and not just in my head. However, I’ve seen the weather forecast for this week and it’s looking great, so I can guarantee I’ll be out in the garden and not indoors in the studio! I’ll keep my camera handy, though, as this week while eating my breakfast I spotted a Curlew and a pair of boxing Hares in the meadow, and a Sparrow Hawk and Woodpecker on my bird feeders so there are always photographic opportunities to be had. My biggest problem is trying not to focus on nature and to get some actual gardening done 😉