Hey this is Dan Norton. I'm here in my
studio, in New York City with Lorena, and
we're making some portraits. I've been
looking at a lot of the photography that
inspired me when I first started, and one
person I really loved was Irving Penn, and
I was looking at a lot of his work,
that's a really simple window light type
stuff, and I thought it'd be nice to do a
kind of a classic black and white
portrait in that style, and for me it's
kind of interesting, because normally and
I say it's a lot, so you probably see me
say it in videos, when I'm shooting
photographing female subjects, I like to
keep my light kind of more of a
butterfly pattern, like overhead, and then
often shot, everybody, male, female,
whatever with a lot of kind of side
light, and shadow and stuff, so today
we're going to embrace the shadows, and
make a portrait of Larene, using you know
much more side light, with some shadow on
her face, and let some of the the details
drop away. Cause I think it can be really
interesting for portraits. So I just have
the, my Hasselblad here, it's the the X1D,
with the 90mm lens, it's plugged
into Focus Software, which is Hassleblad's
tethering software, and I'm using a
Profoto B1X. I'm just using one softbox
to kind of simulate the window, if you
will, and I took this old piece of board
that I have in my studio, and just put it
against the background, so there's
something back there to make it a little
bit interesting. We're shooting at we're
going to shoot at around 5.6 at 500th of a
second ISO 100, to kind of eliminate the
light in the space. Because I'm in a
daylight studio of course,
and you might say Daniel why don't you just use
the window. I could have used that, I
suppose, but it wasn't giving me the
contrast I want. This studio has so much
light bouncing around, so this gives me
the control, and I'm able to shoot, and if
I made a frame without any flash, right
now, right what we're going to get is a
black frame. So this means that I try, I
think I see your earrings, are you wearing
earrings. No I know, it's the earring, there's
dirt, and it's dirt on my screen, but
yeah, so you see the black frame here,
that means none of the light and space
affecting my shot, which means only the
softbox is. I already metered it so we
should be pretty good, but I'll take a
shot just to check and make sure again
90mm lens, a lot of this kind of
stuff was done, you know, with like roll
flexes, and stuff like that, back around
so around 80 mm lenses or 80s on Hasselblad's,
so very popular. There we go sleeping,
that's good, that's always a good one,
listen you never know when a frame with
the eyes closed might work for you. This
could become the famous frame that, that
somehow signifies Larena later in life,
so we're not going to throw that one away,
all right, so try another one with the
eyes open maybe, so nice, good,
nice shot, shadows coming across really
beautiful. I actually like it in color
it's just beautiful skin, that's it's,
good nice vibrance to it but I really wanted
to go black and white for this. So in
focus I can come over into their
exposure adjustment here, and I'm just
going to go to my gray scales, hit that, and
they've got a few different options here.
This is the standard one, red filter is
probably going to make it kind of, make my
highlights glow. So I'm going to put it on
red filter, that's going to give me a bit..
and we can see up here how it makes the
skin glow, you know, which I think is
really nice, and of course we have the
shadows like I said, and you can actually
see it falls off here. I'm not going to
worry about that. I know people
especially now with cameras, they have a
lot of dynamic range. People are really
obsessed with like not losing any detail,
but I think in this kind of portrait it
can be fine just to let it go, and of
course the beautiful shallow depth of
field of the Hasselblad is giving me
like a creamy background, so we'll shoot
some like this, and then we'll mess
around a little bit. So nice and simple,
and again these are raw files which
means that even though I'm doing this
right now, and shooting in black and
white, so I can see what its going to look
like. This is not a permanent adjustment,
I can always go back if I want, nice nice
and simple, just like that she's working
through a variety of poses, and we'll see,
and depending on where she turns her
face you know, you can see how the light
falls differently. You know? Beautiful,
good, couple more, nice, okay, cool that's a nice
combination, we got a bunch of stuff, we
also you all would have a hat, let's try
the hat, love hats. This was actually my
hat I confess, but she's going to wear it. So
the ability to put a hat on without a
mirror is a skill that Larene knows. That's
good..
No that's pretty good. I like it, okay, so
I'm going to frame it up a little differently
with the hat. Let's see if we like that.
We like that.Can you bring your chin like this?
Good, here we go, and we do a test to make
sure. Now it's interesting with the hat cause
remember we are in blackened white,
interesting, I might go back to color
here, because the head is red, and hey...
we might want to see that, right? So boom
it's back, magic, just like that. Okay
we'll try a few with the hats, if you
like it, it's always nice to bring a
little prop in, sometimes when you're
shooting portrait. Why not? Right? And
keeping that, something fresh, oops..
good, nice, good, nice, good, good
good, good..
Beautiful, and a couple more, nice and
simple, and maybe just cause I feel like it,
So interestingly enough, the, the, the
image feels darker in color, which you
know may or may not be to your taste. Let
me just see I think, I might for the
color, I think I might add a reflector
really quickly. I think I had one around
here somewhere.
Yep there it is. I'm running away, this is
what happens right? change stuff in the
middle of the shoot, it's going to bring
this in just for this,
it's interesting to see like how shadows
feel in both black and white, in color.
You know sometimes in in color you don't
want to be quite as, that's nice like that,
with the chin up, good, we just look.
Yeah, see? It fills in a bit more, that,
t I actually like that better, let me
get a little bit of a composition, that's nice,
good, that's very nice.
I'm still letting it fall off contrasty
into this light, kind of black of
the the turtleneck that she's got on,
but her face is more evenly lit, in the
red hat, it's really showing through. Do
think it'll be really be nice, against the
skin. It's actually pretty, you know, two
kind of different, but similar type shots.
Let's just end with, without the hat,
again, I want to go back to black and
white, just for a couple, make sure we
get it, somewhere I throw my black and
white back on. I'm going to lose this
reflector.
There we go.. yeah, I think I want to creep in a
little tighter for the last ones, so I'm
coming in tighter, just for a different
variation. Yeah there we go... it's nice,
right there dude, focusing, just check it
again to make sure, yeah, I like that, good,
remember that your distance to
subject is really important because, if
you're closer to somebody, definitely
feels more intimate when you're making
the portrait. That can be very nice,
especially if you know a portrait that is
of a personality versus, just let's say a
portrait for know high school seniors, or
something. So if you're doing something
that wants to feel more emotional
attachment, and it's nicer to be closer
to your subject, just not so close that
it makes their nose too big. I
changed my focus point for the last one
I want to try to frame this up more
square. Okay, here we go,
hold like that, focusing, beautiful, here
we go nice, we just check that one,
because I think I moved. Medium format,
you got to be really careful, with
medium format, because every little bit
makes a difference when you're moving
around. This camera is so tiny it feels
like a DSLR but it's still medium format,
so depth the feels very shallow. Got to
be wary of that, so you know be inspired
by other photographers, take shots that
you like, and try to make them your own,
and get cool people like Larene to pose
for you. It makes it even easier, you can
find Larena by the way on social
media, we'll put the links in the
description here. You can find me
danielnortonphotographer on Facebook
and on YouTube here. Thanks for
watching and be sure to subscribe to
AdoramaTV of course,
and I'll see you next time OnSet.