Studio Portraits

One thing that I really like is to book a model I never met, decide a time and a place and just take the photos that comes in mind during the photo session, no other planning. Okej, some planning, I tell the model to bring som clothes she really like and some makeup.

What I like about this is that I never know what kind of pictures I will leave with.

This time I had a horrible day and when it was time to shoot I didn’t have any ideas. That’s when i found this drape in the studio and just began shooting whatever popped up in my mind. Some of the pictures i shot through the drapes and others she used it as clothing.

The camera for this shoot was a Pentax 67 II, a camera I hadn’t used for years so it felt lonely. I took three rolls of film, thought 15 images where quite good and ended up with these four because these went well together.

I wanted to try something new with the lighting so I took a Profoto head with the standrad reflector and pointed it towards two bookends to get a big light source. There is also a flash pointed at the background and that gives a litte fill to her.

The film I used was Fuji Astia and after scanning I almost haven’t done anything to them, I even kept the purple tint after.

Backstage photos: Andreas Dahl

A while back the organization PR of Sweden held an after work for its members and I was there to do two things. Talk about how important the picture has become in PR and take photos of the guests.

I took my Elinchrome Quadra with to heads, my camera and headed to a bar I never seen before. There I found these blue drapes hanging from the sealing and decided to shoot there. I didn’t have much room to work in so i went with a one light setup and hoped for the best.

I used a shoot through umbrella wich I moved up and down depending on who I photographed. Sometimes I also shot it in the window camera left to get a softer light with longer fall of.

Behind the scenes: Rasmus Viktorsson

I love large format photography and taking portraits in old school style with simple lighting and stiff poses, but still with a modern touch.

One evening I invited a couple of my friends to the studio for som beers and shooting som portraits. These pictures is the result of that evening.

Sorry to say I can’t give much information on the lighting as it changed a couple of times and I forgot how. But you can see a some of the lighting setups in the behind the scens photos and I hope that is enough.

I had some problems with the first picture because I forgot to check for reflections in the glasses but I fixed it in Photoshop. In the video below you can se how I did it (sorry, the video is in Swedish).

Kamera & Bild is one of Swedens largest photo magazines and this month they made a special on shot called The Portrait Bible (porträttbibeln) in which I was featured in a seven page long article.

The article focuses on my signature look, using tilt in portraits. For the article the magazine needed some backstage photos and to se how I worked so in less then 24 hours I set up this shoot.

I got the extremely talented Nikeisha Andersson to help me and she got ahold of both a stylist, designer, MUA and model. On top of that we had a reporter from the magazine, my usual assistant and the stylist assistant som the studio was quite crowded.

My plan was to use a Mamiya RZ 67 Pro II with a digital back but it gave up on me while preparing for the shoot so I was left with the backup camera, a Nikon D700 with a 45mm PC-E f/2.8.

Lighting

The lighting in this photo is simple and consists of a Profoto 5′ Octabox from the side a little above her face. It gives me a big lightsource and really soft light in which you can move the model around quite a bit without ruining the lighting. This way I could concentrate on working with the model. If you use smaller light sources you often set a light for a specific pose and aren’t able to play around so much.

The light source is placed a little above her to get shadows under her cheek bones, mouth and nose. That gives her face a lot of character. There is also a strip light behind her to camera right for som hair and side light. When I look at the picture now I should have chosen a bigger light source but that’s life.

Post Production

In this video you can se all the post processing I’ve done.

Cloths and jewelry: Dee Omar, Behind the Scenes: Stina Mathiesen, MUA: Karolina Danielson.

This is how it can look when I’m away on assignment and don’t have the luxury of working in my studio. I got the assignment of photographing the directors of Huawei’s swedish office.

The lighting consists of a Elichrome Quadra pack with two heads, one with a umbrella and one with the standard reflector. The background is a Lastolite foldable background with one white and one gray side.

On these photos I used the gray side of the background, the umbrella as mainlight and the secod flash for a hard backlight. The lighting it gives have a little film look over it with this shadow edge that runs straight through the face. Maybe it was a little much for a press portrait and I tried to get the backlight a little softer, with no luck. The backlight was to close to the background and the subject so it was hard to soften it enough.

Now afterwards I can think of a couple of other ways I’ve could have done it but that’s how it works. Then I know how to do it the next time!

The background was a little small for the wider portraits so I hade to do some fixing in Photoshop, here is a video showing a good tip on how you can fix a smal background. Sorry to say it is in swedish.

Behind the Scenes: Isabelle Lind