Hey what's up everybody! Miguel Quiles here
and in this episode of The Breakdown,
I'm going to show you guys a
really simple one light setup to shoot
some headshots outdoors.
Welcome back to The Breakdown, my name is
Miguel Quiles and I am here outside
again with the fabulous actress and
model and just all-around cool person
Julie Dawson and I'm going to shoot some
headshots outdoors using just a single
light source, and so let me go ahead and
let me break down exactly what we're
doing here today, so I'm using the Sony
a99 II. This is a 42 megapixel, full-frame
camera, really fantastic super great
fast autofocus which I really love.
It also has a really nice screen that
basically twists around so you can do
selfies if you wanted to. I don't do that
type of thing but if you wanted to you
totally could. Really excellent camera
and I've got the 85mm f/1.8. Now
if you've watched a lot of my episodes
of The Breakdown you already know that I
love shooting head shots at the
85mm focal length, and today is no
different. we're going to be using the
Tamron lens to be able to accomplish
this, and I'm using the Profoto air
remote, because today I'm actually going
to be shooting these using the Profoto
B1. I'm outdoors with the B1. I
have my five-foot octa which I would
normally be using in this studio, if you've
watched The Breakdown you've seen me
use it many times, I'm actually using it
outdoors right now I've actually got it
sitting on a Kupo C-Stand to keep it
nice and steady. I've also got some extra
sandbags on the bottom it's a little
windy outside, which is great it makes
the hair flow and look super amazing and
epic for a headshot but it also
made this thing fall over before we
started rolling. I hadn't put the
sandbags on there and all of a sudden
this sucker just started tumbling down.
Don't be like me when it comes to
this, make sure that you're using sandbags,
make sure that you have your
modifiers and your lights nice and steady.
Usually I like to walk up from the
modifier and kind of give it a quick tap
to make sure it doesn't fall over. Had I
done that I would have known hey it
wasn't steady but again just make sure
that you do that. So simple one
light, I'm going to be shooting these
wide open at F, actually you know what,
I'm not going to shoot these wide open.
I'm going to shoot these in an f/2.0 now
you could totally shoot these wide open
if you wanted to but I always feel like
when it comes to headshots it's kind of importance that
just because you have a lens that shoots
at an f/1.8 or a f/1.4 or even lower. You
don't have to shoot at those settings
there's going to be some times when
you're going to want a higher aperture
so that way you can get more texture and
more detail in the skin, which Julie has
great skin so there's no reason for me
to blur it to death shooting it at an f/1.8.
We're going to shoot these at f/2.0,
one1/160th of a second and ISO 100.
I have the flash here basically acting like a
fill flash. I could shoot these with
natural light with a reflector but I
like the flexibility of being able to
shoot this with an off-camera flash
because as the sun moves around
and clouds cover it and do it's thing we
have the same even exposure shot, after
shot, after shot. I have the Profoto 5
foot octa and I have it slightly tilted down.
I feel like this creates the natural
looking shadows on the face. You
could definitely use a much smaller octa
if you wanted to, you could use a
2 foot octa and it would work pretty well
but I'm a big fan of really soft light
sources and so this bigger modifier when
you have it maybe about 2 feet away from
your subject it's going to create this
beautiful awesome light that I really
love in my images so feel free to use
whatever size octa or whatever size
modifier you like but for me I love
using the 5-footer so that's what I'm
going with today. Where we're
shooting right now there's, this is
really outside of my studio which I've
done several shots that are in my
portfolio that you would think were like
an awesome location but what's funny is
is that you don't have to really look
too far, like there's interesting stuff
all over the place and so where we are
right now there are these little flowers,
these white flowers behind and so the
goal of this particular shot is to
really have those flowers just basically
get blurred, so there's these little
white highlights in the background and
then of course beautiful light on
Julie. That's what we're going to be
going for with this look and I'll be
guiding her and posing her and kind of
moving her around the spot that she's in
right now even though we're in daylight
I basically found a spot where the sun
is not hitting her on the shoulders and
it's kind of hitting her on the top of
the head a little bit so it's
creating a little bit of a hair light,
which I'm cool with. Like I want that,
but I basically want to make sure that I
don't have a lot of dappled light on her
and so it's fine if it's on the shoulders
or if it's on the hair but I'm
really looking to make sure that I'm not
getting the sun actually lighting her
forehead or lighting her nose. I only
want this modifier to be lighting her
facial features. The hair could be lit by
the sun, the shoulders can be lit by the
sun and it's super helpful for that. It
creates a little bit of separation from
the green and white background but
that's it really, really easy. I'm going
to be moving her around as I see the
sunlight get more intense maybe as it's
coming through the the leaves and the
trees I'll have her adjust and move
around to get her in the right spot but
as we are right now we're in the right
place so let's go ahead and let's start shooting.
Alright so there you have it everybody
really easy simple one light setup here
shooting headshots outdoors with Julie.
Thank you so much again for modeling for
me in this video, make sure if you guys
enjoyed the content follow her on
Instagram her handle is in the
description for this video, also make
sure you follow me on instagram
@miguelquilesjr and while you're here
watching this video make sure that you
subscribe to AdoramaTV, why? Because they
have a ton of videos coming out just
about every single day on photography, on
lenses, on gear, on drones, all kinds
of stuff. I'm watching, I'm hoping
that you guys are watching so just make
sure you subscribe and also make sure
that you check out the Adorama Learning
Center where they have more articles and
more great content thank you so much for
watching The Breakdown and I will see
you in the next episode. Bye everybody.