Transcripts
1. Taking the Studio on the Road (and Hoping for the Best): So what do you do when instead
of being in your nice, cozy, well equipped
portrait studio, you have to go out
onto location, maybe into a boardroom, client offices, who knows? But you still have to create
the most stunning portraits. In this class, we're
going to answer that precise question,
show you how to do it, show you how to think about it, and give you a whole load of
ideas for your photography. I'm Paul Wilkinson, an award winning portrait photographer based in the heart of
the English countryside right here in the UK. In this class, we're
going to step through all of the stages
about what to pack, why you pack it, how you use it, and how you create variety wherever you may find yourself, whether or not you
have a studio, whether it's just that
you're always out in location or if you
have a studio, but you find yourself
out there with a client, this video will answer some of those questions.
Enjoy the class.
2. What To Take? (And Why It’s Always Slightly Too Much): So we're going out on location. So what do we take with us? Well, let me step through
the things that I take. This represents about 80% of the times I'm
out on location. This is pretty much the
kit I'll take every time. And there's a reason for that. Firstly, it's lightweight
and it's versatile, but also by taking the
same kit every time, it's very easy to remember all the things you
need in your bag. So let's start
with our lighting. For most of the time
I'm out on location, I'll take a pair of
Elinchrom threes. Why? Well, they're very small.
They're very light. They go into a backpack,
incredibly versatile lights, very powerful lights
when I need them to be 250 watt seconds is usually enough for
anything I could wish for. They've got great modeling
lights on the front, so at least when I'm
setting up the shot, I can see the
reflections in the eyes. Of course, if you want your
battery life to extend, you turn those
modeling lights off. I'm in a big room or I know I'm doing some big group shots, I might take some
Elinchrom fives. The only difference, really,
is that extra power, about double the power, but they're heavier and
take another bag. So the threes work perfectly as that sort
of hinterland between a small speed light and our
big regular studio lights. So it's a pair of
threes into the bag. Of course, you need
a pair of tripods for those, so they
go in, as well. In terms of modifiers,
what I'm going to take is 30 centimeter buy 100 centimeter soft box and a 1 meter squared soft
box. Why those two? Well, clearly, the 1 meter softbox has
a beautiful soft light. And if I can justify carrying
that in, then I will do so. The 30 centimeter
buy 100 centimeter, incredibly versatile,
very lightweight. And so that's just
perfect for a kiss light, an edge light, a hair
light if I need it. And, of course, at this
stage, I don't always know what photographs I'm
going to be taking or what space I'm going
to be working in. So being small and
lightweight and versatile has its benefits. If I'm really traveling light, instead of the 1 meter square, I'll take a 30 centimeter
by 100 centimeter box. So I've got two of those
just because they're small, throwing the bag really
quickly, very light, and I can do most of what I could do with
a 1 meter square box, not quite the softness and quite the spread
across all dimensions. With both of the lights, I'll pack their grids to
go on the front. Don't always use grids,
but they have their use, if you're worried about lights
spilling around an office. We were training someone
yesterday and exploring reasons why whenever they're working in one of their
regular locations, they get some really
weird shadows on the background
or the back wall. And probably that's because
light is spilling away out of the soft box and hitting a reflective surface like a
window and bouncing back in. So we pack a couple of grids just to make sure if I
need them, I've got them. That's our lights and
the stands for those. Now, what about the backdrop? Well, there's lots
of options here. For me, nine times out of ten, I'm going to take a paper roll, a mid gray or a darker gray because if I wanted
to be a light gray, I just push more
light towards it. If I wanted to go almost black, I just bring everything
away from it. And you can get away
from pretty light gray, all the way to almost jet black with just gray paper roll. As soon as you know
using a paper roll, you're going to need
something to stick it on us. So for us, normally, I'd use a crossbar
and two stands, though also we have one of
the single stand gutters, which is really
versatile and small to pack, which is great. And given I do know one thing about the room that
we're going to be in, it's quite a big room. So for this, I've also
got a white scrim. I think it's seven
foot by four foot which we can just clip
onto a cross rail, and I can either shine light
at it and bounce it back. If I want a white background, I can shine light through it, which is another way of
creating a white background. If I want a big soft light, I can use it to the side,
the shine light through it. That's just another idea. And the whole purpose
of packing like this is if I don't know
exactly what I'm going to do, I need to have as many
bases covered as I can. So I've got this big scrim. It's a lastolyte scrim, just basically
translucent material. And I'm going to
put that side by side with the paper
roll on the crossbar. So they go into the
bag. The only challenge I do have is the crossbar, even in its collapsed form, just stigs out at
the end of the bag. So when we close
it, we just have to zip it and leave
it sticking out. I guess I could take a hack
or to it and shorten it down, but frankly, I just
don't have the heart. So we've got lights, modifiers, tripods for those, two tripods for the
crossbar, a crossbar, paper roll, and light
lasterlt Scrib. Now, what else do
we need? Well, I also need some clamps because, obviously, this happens
all the time, right? You put your paper roll
on, you roll it out, and then before you know it,
the papers continue to roll. You need a clamp, at least one clamp just
to clamp on there. I carry a handful of them.
They're as cheap as chips. They're about a pound each,
probably about $1 each, I would think. And
they're great. They're just the kind
of clamps you see on a market stall to attach
the canvas to the frame. You can get them from
almost anywhere. I carry a load of those.
They're pretty brutal. They're not great.
Aesthetically, but they work. I've also got one
very large clamp, should I need to lock off the whole paper roll onto
something for any reason. Remember, the whole
point of this is I don't want to be caught out
when I'm on location. I want to be able to fix things. I want to be able
to set up things. I want to be able to create
whatever light I want. I just don't want to
have to carry everything I have in the studio to do it. I can't do that, particularly
if I'm on train. I've also got a couple
of rolls of gaffer tape. They're just to set a mark for my client so that if they go and get changed to
a different outfit, when they come back, they're going to stand in
exactly the same place. I've got a light gaffer tape
to go onto a dark carpet, dark gaffer tape to go onto a light carpet or light floor. Of course, please do test the gaffer tape on a
small space first. And if you're worried that
it's going to leave a mark, just take the tack off it, maybe use the edge of your bag or something, take
the strip of tape, stick it, release it, stick it, release it, stick it, release it, and then stick
it to the floor. And that will just take some of the adhesive out of it
so that you don't leave your client with
an adhesive mark on the floor. I've
got my lights. I've got my stands,
the triggers. Well, they're in my
normal camera bag. So I don't need to worry
too much about dogs, so I have to obviously with different manufacturers
of lights. You have to remember to take the right triggers
for the right job. So we close all that up,
very little left to do, except that I will also have just a small umbrella
that goes in there, and I will possibly carry
a pair of LED tubes. Now, those LED tubes
are normally in the back of my
camera bag anyway as a little get out
of JO free guard should something just need a little bit of
additional light. But they're very
useful, very versatile. And in this instance,
they're part of the packing list
for our main job. The whole idea of
this is that we can scoop all of that up
between two of us. Whether it's me
and an assistant, or me and Sarah, my wife, we need to scoop all of that up and either get it into the
back of the land rover, which is nice and easy, apart from lifting it
up, which is hard. But once it's in, I can actually take a huge amount of
equipment it there. But more often than not, I
find myself working in London, in which case, the two of us are going to be
heading on the train. So not only is it gonna
fit in a andover, it's now going to be
possible for the two of us to wheel everything down onto the platform onto a
train and out into the tube network on
London. So we do it. Everything's in the land rover. Off we go and now let's see
what the location holds.
3. Setting Up: Backdrops, Brick Walls & Gaffer Tape Bravery: So normally for me, the most nerve racking moment once I've checked the
equipment for about 25 times, sometimes stopping
in a lay byte if I'm driving just to make
sure the camera's in. I kid you know, I was once
working as a drummer. The one thing I
forgot my bass drum. Now paranoid. Every
drum I pack kit, I double check it, triple
check it, a duple check it. So once I've got
all of that sorted, the most nerve racking
point is when you arrive at your client
or at the location. Because you don't or, you rarely know exactly what to expect. So the first thing then is to obviously get the
gland over parked up. It's quite a big car. Make sure it's parked in a way where I can get the kit out the back. The number of times
I've parked in the space and then realized
with long paper rolls, I need a bit more wiggle room. So it's a stupid point, but bear it in mind, park so you can get the
kit out the back. Once you've done that,
we'll go see the client. They'll introduce
us to the room. It's usually a
compromised location. It is rarely the shape
and size of a studio. More often than not,
it's a boardroom with a large boardroom
table down in the middle, occasionally, small
meeting room. Very occasionally, I
find myself working in something like an
entrance auditorium, an atrium or
something like that. Now, if you find yourself
working in those spaces, it's great to have
the room, but, of course, you're going to be consistently firing strobes. And if you do that, brace yourself for people moaning
about the distraction. It's just part of the
life of a photographer. And it's worth
checking in advance if you know the
location is going to be an open plan just double check how people
feel about the flashes. And if necessary, you can adjust to using something
like LED lighting, though it's not
nearly so versatile because you can never overpower the ambient light that way. But it's just something
to bear in mind. So here, we've assessed
the room, we've walked in. It is a huge space,
which is great. I don't think I've ever
been in this room, even though it's actually
over in our village. Um, it's big. It's got two
different types of walls. It's got some bare brick walls. It's got some white walls, and bare brick, sort of
off bluish gray walls. And I'm thinking that's
quite interesting. We can work off both of those
spaces if we wanted to. It does have a blue
floor. Does that matter? Well, it might do, because
it's a semi shiny floor, and any light is going
to bounce off it. So one of the things
we're going to have to do is make sure we take at least one color
calibration image to make sure that if there
is blue light pinging up, we've taken care of it
in the calibration. So I've got a little data
color spider checker, and we'll just take
a quick shot of that and make sure we're getting
no skipped light backup. Blue. Against a couple of walls, the guys in this room
are using it as storage for stacks of chairs
and stacks of tables. Now, when I look
at the tables and chairs against the wall, the chairs, I'm not going
to use those as a backdrop. They don't look
particularly interesting. As it happens, the shape of the tables
leant against the wall, the aluminum sides might make an interesting, slightly
abstract background. If I wanted to take
some photographs that are much more personal, maybe for LinkedIn or something
rather than corporate, which is usually why
I'm in an office. So I bear that in mind. I've got windows on two sides, and that's important because
as the sun traverses round, I'm going to get different
lighting patterns coming in. One of the advantages of using strobes is there's
enough power and these Elinchrom threes to overpower probably
most sunlight. So if I find a patch of sunlight scraping
across the floor, if I can't close the blinds, and that's fairly normal when
I'm working in an office. I I can't close the blinds, then I can know I can turn the power on the
strobes to maximum, and I will just about be able to eliminate any impact
from the sunshine. So once you get into
a room and a space, what you have to then
do is figure out where am I going to do what? Now, the process for
me as a photographer, ideally, I want to
be able to take, I don't know, five or
six different looks, distinct looks, which are a
combination of outfits and different sort of styles of either studio lighting
or location lighting. And I need to do it probably in a maximum of 15
minutes per person. If I'm working on location, the chances are it's a corporate
or commercial style gig, and they'll have people
lined up to come through one at a time every
ten to 15 minutes. Usually, what we'd
say is plan for 15. We'll do it in ten,
and then if there's any overrun or somebody's caught up in the
meeting, because, of course, generally, for me, if they've book me to
be the photographer, we're talking exec level, board level, senior manager. We're not talking
the whole workforce. In which case, those
guys are easily delayed in meetings or phone calls or conference calls or whatever. So we have to allow the
timings to be out of flex. So we'll book the slots
10 minutes to 15 minutes, 15 minute slots with 10
minutes sort of banking on taking the photographs. And then every sort
of five or six slots, we'll put a 15 minute
fire break in. So if things are running behind, there's a natural
buffer to sort of absorb that overrun and then
we're back on time again. So here I've looked
around the room, and I've thought
to myself, Okay, two different types
of brick wall, and both of those
are interesting. Chairs and tables
in the background. I think the tables
might be interesting. I don't think the chairs are
going to be interesting. And then I've got two
sets of windows in which the light is
going to change as it swings around
the building. As it happens, one
set is south facing, the other set is west facing. So I know the sun's
going to traverse round. It's winter, so it's
going to be fairly low. But I think there'll
be some amazing images to take with my
subjects near to those. So what I've done is I've
said, you know what? I'll lose the chairs.
They're not interesting. We're going to set everything
up in front of those. They're not going to be part
of the actual photography. They're just going to
be part of the space. I'll set my crossbar
across them. I've got room to one side,
room to the other side, so I can put my key
light on one side, a kick light or a rim
light on the other side, lots of space to play. Everything's perfect, and I think it's going to
be an amazing shoot.
4. Making The Most Of Your (Limited) Timee: So for this video, the style of images we're
shooting are what would be broadly scooped
up into headshots, corporate, commercial,
that kind of image. They're images that
are designed to sell either the person in them or the company that the
person works for. We do an awful lot of
this kind of work, and basically what
we're trying to do is get across that you would like to do business The
images should be friendly, trustworthy, approachable, in some cases, joyous,
sometimes cerebral. There are all sorts of
little angles on it, depending on the sector
we're working in. So if we're working
in hospitality, they may be a little
bit more energetic, a little bit more open, a
little bit more friendly. Please come in to
the restaurant, that style of image. If we're working, let's say,
for the banking sector, it might be a little
bit more steady, a little bit more
about the trust angle, the seriousness of it, a
little bit of gravitas. But in the end, we're
trying to do the same job, which is to persuade
the viewer of the image that these are the people
you'd love to work with. All right for this hoot,
we have two models. I have Lee, who's six foot and in his
40s, and I have Libby. Who isn't barely five
foot and in her 20s. And that's not unusual. The idea that I'm
going to have to shoot maybe ten people in a day, and they're all gonna be
exactly the same height, exactly the same look,
exactly the same build, same height, same age, same sort of energy about them. Well, that just isn't going to happen unless I happen
to find myself, I suppose, working in a factory that does
cloning human beings. Here, of course, there's
going to be variety, and we have to allow for that. We have to allow space and time to be able to
adapt the shots. But at the same time, have
to have a similar feel. So if I'm working with
a group of people in a corporate headshot
or corporate portrait environment,
the chances are, I've got to create
every image using the same lighting
pattern or else it looks very weird on the
website when all of the shots are lined up and
they're all lit differently, different backgrounds,
different ideas. Of course, in the
studio, if I was just lighting the
people that walked in, they would be different
because I'd adapt the lighting to suit
each shape, each height, each texture of skin, clothing, it would always be different per model because that's what you do as a portrait photographer. You react to the person
in front of you. But when you're talking
about corporate and branding and commercial where it's across multiple people, in the end, there has to be
some stylistic consistency. And if you don't do that, it can just look a bit hit and miss. Sometimes that'll come
from a brand department, sometimes it'll come from
your commissioning client, which might be the
head of a department. Either way, you would normally try and keep everything
very similar. Here, we've not worried
about it too much, but I'm just talking you
through the broad principles. So let's start in this segment
with the studio setup. Now, I've rigged the
studio area of this shot or this chute to be
really, really versatile. I've got a gray paper
background which I can move the lights
away from or closer, which will darken
it or lighten it. I've got a white
scrim hanging up, which I can either push light at and bounce light off it,
so it'll go nearly white. I can push light through from behind so it'll go fully white. Or I can just not
light it at all, in which case, it
will go a light gray. All of these are
perfectly applicable, and I can just look
at the outfits, look at the build of
the person in front, and decide as I go what
I want it to look like. So on the gray
background, for instance, Lee with his jacket or
Lee with his black shirt, just posing them very simply. I've done it with
a single light. I've also done it with
a slight kiss light. That's just a little
bit of a rim light from that 30 centimeter box
in the background. You got to work on your angles, a little bit of a head the
way he folds his arms, puts his hands in his
pockets, all of these things, I'm trying to create just some gentle energy and a
little bit of movement. You can see how easy
and how quick it is once you get your
head into the game. The whole idea is to be
versatile or to be quick, but to not compromise any
more than you need to the variety and the tuning of the light per client as you go.
5. Hitting The Button And Keeping The Energy Up: So we've used the studio rig
that we brought in with us. But here in this
particular room, we've got the opportunity of
doing something different. If I do get that chance, I will always use it. I'll give you an
example recently working with a hedge
fund in London. Everything was set as a studio, but they put us in a
boardroom that had a balcony out with London in the background
in all its glory. And, of course,
every chance I got, if I had a subject who was willing and thought
it would be interesting, we will take them out onto
the balcony and shoot beautiful daylight
photographs with London sort of gleaming and
glistening in the distance. I'll always look
for opportunities to create something different. And for me, usually, that
means something softer, something using available light. So with this particular room, we've got two sides of windows, south facing and an east facing, and that's going to
be very different in the morning to the afternoon. So you have to be aware of that. If you're planning a shoot, the light is going to change if you're using available light. One question I get asked
quite a lot is why doesn't the daylight affect
your studio lighting? Well, that's one of the
joys of using strobes. The amount of power,
the amount of light you get in a split second out of a strobe will completely overpower
any available light, or at least it will, if
you've got decent strobes, and the room isn't at least
in bright, hard sunlight. So that's how the daylight or the available light isn't
affecting our studio rig. So now we're going to do turn the strobes off and
play just a little bit. Part of the fun of being a studio or portrait
photographer, rather, is that you can play. You can just react
to your client, and if it feels appropriate, they are comfortable,
you're comfortable. You're not absorbing time
that's being paid for. You're creating images that are useful and interesting
and have value. Then once you've got
your studio stuff, the stuff that you're probably
being commissioned for, then you can add some variety that adds value to the shot. We've started with
the white walls, and depending on the different directions and
different times of day, we get very different
photographs. The shots of Lee
are very high key. They have a really sort
of glow about them. But notice the shadows are almost horizontal because
Lee's really tall. He's nearly as tall as
the windows themselves. And so the shadows are
starting to run almost horizontally across the
wall. But he looks great. Shot him to the side with a big white expanse of
war, and of course, most header images on
websites need that option. Now, obviously,
in today's world, where you can dynamically change the layout of
your header images, it's become less critical
than it used to, but it's still a
really good thing. It's to have a big white or big neutral colored expanse
to be able to put text, to be able to put titling, to be able to put
the company name, for instance, alongside it. So these images are
great for that. With Libby, she's
that much shorter, and we shot her in the afternoon for this
particular video. The light has
changed completely. It's now swung round. It's much lower. So I've
got this softer light, this more wraparound light. But still, against
the brick walls, she looks absolutely fantastic. So using the walls,
we've done that, and then we've looked
at these vertical lines of the windows. They are just at right angles to where the
tables are being stored. So I've got all of
these little options where I can play with the light. If you bring the subject close to the stripes
to the light, there's something really quite fashionsque, fashion
fashion inspired. I don't know what
the right word is. There's something really fashion oriented about those images. A little bit of
funkiness about them, keeping the windows in shot. So if you step your client away, you've just got the
soft light from them. You put them up
towards the windows. You can now see what
the light source is, and you get these
vertical stripes, which just, I don't know, add
a little bit of interest. If you step them away
and use the tables, the stack tables,
the background, but keep them out of focus with a nice shallow
depth of field. It's just something a little different. Nobody can
see what they are. They just look like an
abstract industrial pattern. So we've worked our
way around the room, taking lots of shots
near the windows, away from the windows,
using the white walls, using the gray walls, and you
can see that we've created some really interesting and slightly different photographs for each of our clients.
6. Using What Your Have As Props: Distance. So, already, we have a
great set of images, and now it's time to
just have a bit of fun. Obviously, we've got
props. We've used the props the tables
as backdrops. But here, what we're
going to do is use a table, well, as a table. Now, when I'm photographing
in a boardroom, there is nearly always a table. And I find myself
more often than not photographing along it with
a camera and me at one end, the lighting and the
backdrop, at the other end, because that gives
me the distance, the separation distance
that I like to work at. I don't like to work really
closely with my client. That's just because I prefer a long lens and that distance, you get a nice compression. So I've always got
a boardroom table of some description in the room, and more often than not, it's
between me and my subject. So here we've pinged
up one of the tables. We're just going to
get Lee and Libby to sit at the table and have a look and see if that
makes a difference. These are white
melamine coated tops, so the light's gonna pop
up from a little bit, which gives you an
interesting light. It's really just for the joy
of it. I've already seen. We've also used the tables
as stacked backdrops, and that's just 'cause it's
blurred. It looks different. We might just be a hint at it being sort of almost industrial, which is really quite cool. We've also got both Libby and
Lee to put on their coat. I'm a huge fan. The photographing
people in their coats. Don't ask me why. It's got
to be something to do with the fact that they
very rarely have patterns on. They're
usually dark. They usually reflect light
in an interesting way because they're usually a
mat surface or mat material. And it just seems
to work for me. So I've done that, of
course, I've done that. Got both of them in their coats, and I will do this
more often than not a suit jacket or a coat makes for an
interesting photograph. And then at the end, one
last final thing is, what about when
you're in a pinch, you don't have a soft box or an umbrella and you
just want to be able to take a really soft,
beautiful photograph? Well, what you can do
as I've done here is you can point a bear head flash, just a bare bulb, a bear
flash straight at the wall. And the way you approach
this is that you think about if I had the choice, where would the soft box be? Where would the light
come from to light Libby? Where would it go? What you
do is you pick that spot, and that's where you
point your light. You position your subject,
and you think, Okay, the softbox would
be there, point your light at that spot. If it's a matte surface
like it is here, these white walls, they will reflect light equally
in all directions, which means the light
that's striking Libby is exactly what I would expect to get more or less from a softbox. To constraints.
I'm going to need a lot of power on
the light because, of course, the light's going
everywhere in the room. And also, if there's
coloration in the wall, that coloration is going to
be part of your lighting. You just have to allow for
it. And if that's happening, you get your subject to hold
a color calibration card and you'll be able to color
calibrate it back out again. So if it's a blue wall,
I'd expect a blue light. I then have to adjust
my white balance and my color balance accordingly. The other thing you get when
you're doing this kind of technique is not only is the
light strike in the wall, it's being reflected out
and then pinging around the I do that like it's pinging in circles. It
doesn't ping in circles. It pings in straight lines, but it's bouncing
around the room, which means that you get a
softness in the contrast. You've got a big light source. That's the light
hitting the wall and being bounced directly. And then you have, like,
hitting secondary light that's pinging off the walls,
the floor, the ceiling. And that reduces the
difference between the lit side of i and the
shaded side of Libby, which means you've got
a much lower contrast. That low contrast is very soft, it's very flattering and
it's very easy to do. It's a technique that
isn't used enough. It's a technique that's
very available to you. All you need is a speed
light, a wall, and a subject. So it's worth
bearing that in mind if ever you're caught in
a pinch and you think, Oh, I wish I could
create a soft light. We've done it very well
here, and of course, Libby's beautiful, so it
makes for a stunning image. That notes, what we've got to do now is check all the kit, pack it all back into its bags. Make sure we haven't
left anything. Yeah, I normally leave
something lying around. Why do they make black thing? Why do they make camera
stuff all black? I always leave bits, cables,
lens cups, you name it. So a quick cross check
down the checklist, make sure everything's
where it's expected to be in its bag, back into the land
rover, home in time for a cucumber sandwich
and a nice cup of earl gray tea, if
that's your thing.
7. Thank You: So in this video,
we've shown you how to approach taking a craft
out on the roads. We've shown you
what we would use, why we choose to use it, how we use it when
we're out there on location on our approach
to the whole hoot. Hopefully, we've created
some images that you find interesting
and given you some examples of
how you can take this and apply it to your work. We would love to see your work. We would love to see how
you've taken this approach, taken your craft of
portrait photography, put it into a location, and
created some stunning images. Please do upload
your projects below. So if you're interested in all things to do with
portrait photography, why not head over to mastering
portraitphotography.com, which is absolutely
chock full of ideas, techniques, and resources
for portrait photography. It is also, of course, the spiritual home of the Mastering portrait
photography podcast, and whatever else you
do, be kind to yourself. Take care.
Paul Wilkinson, Portrait Photographer
