On this episode of The Breakdown I'm going
to show you guys how I use my beauty
portrait lighting setups to do a male
beauty portrait.
It's going to be really interesting,
stay tuned.
Welcome back to The Breakdown.
My name is Miguel Quiles.
You guys have probably seen
my episodes in the past
where I showed you my beauty lighting
setup and I had some people asking me
"Miguel could I use this if I was
photographing men's portraits close-up?"
The answer is, yes you can!
Let me show you guys what
I have going right now.
I've got a Profoto D2 as my main light
and as you often see in a lot of my
beauty portraits I'm actually using a
beauty dish.
This is the Profoto beauty dish.
This actually has a soft white interior.
The main reason that I'm doing that is
that I want to cut down on the glare on
the forehead.
So if you have a silver reflector
it adds a little bit more shine
to the highlights on the person's face.
This one will have a little bit
less intense highlights on the face,
which is really great.
I've actually added a light diffusing sock
on the front of this as well to cut
down on the highlights that will show up
naturally on his face.
I've also got a silver reflector below
and I'm using this mainly to add a little bit
of a catch light to the bottom of his eye.
These portraits actually came out
looking pretty good as I was testing
them without the reflector.
I'll show you guys what that
looks like in a moment.
I really love to make the eyes stand out
and to pop.
Especially when you're taking a shot where
the person's face is filling the frame.
You want to add that interest to the eyes
and the silver reflector below
definitely makes that happen.
The last thing that we have is a little bit
of a hair light from behind.
We have a Profoto B2 inside
of a Profoto 2x3 softbox.
I've added the grid to the softbox
because what I want to be able to do is
just add a little bit of a highlight
on his hair and on his shoulders,
to separate him from the black background.
Now speaking of the background,
I'm using a Savage Black Vinyl Background.
Again, I'm using this because I want to be able
to cut down the glare that's going to be
hitting the background from these lights.
So that's the lighting setup.
Let me go ahead and talk to you guys
about the camera and the lens.
I'm using the Sony a7R II
for all of these shots and I've
got it paired up with the 90mm 2.8 macro.
Now, if you've watched any of my other
Adorama TV episodes or you've
been in any of my workshops, you know
that I lovingly call this lens Excalibur
because it is extremely sharp this is
one of these sharpest lenses that has
ever been created.
Which is great because
when you're photographing beauty
portraits, whether it's male or female,
it's all about texture, it's all about
capturing detail and sharpness.
So to do that a 90mm macro is going to be the
lens that I'm going to call upon to make
that happen.
I'm going to be shooting all of these
at a higher f-stop.
So I'm actually going to try
to shoot things at around an f/16.
I'll go ahead and show the final
settings on the images on the screen but
I'm aiming to get to f-16.
To trigger all of these lights
I'm using the Profoto Air Remote
and this is going to be set up
to where it's going to trigger
my Profoto D2 main light,
as well as my B2.
So that's the setup.
Really nice and simple.
We have Gavin, once again, here to
do his thing, to look men's
version of beautiful.
So it's going to be a lot of fun.
We're going to take some really
close-up portraits here and
let's see how they come out.
So to show you guys what this looks like,
I'm going to go ahead and take this
first shot here and this image is
actually just going to be the main light
with the hair light behind with
no reflector.
You guys can see what's
happening, the light on his face
looks pretty good.
Let's go ahead and bring in the silver reflector
and let's see what's happening.
So now you guys can see that with
the silver reflector below you're getting
this really awesome catch light in his eyes.
Now you can keep moving around,
mixing up the expressions.
He's got great blue eyes and we're
able to really bring that out by just
using this silver reflector below.
So when it comes to these close-up
portraits it's all about capturing a lot
of texture in the skin a lot of detail
but also being able to make
their eyes pop.
So that when the viewers look at
these portraits the first thing that
they're going to look at is their eyes
because they're the most interesting
thing in the frame.
Alright so there it is folks,
really easy for you to set up
two lights with a reflector to shoot
some men's style beauty portraits
in the studio.
Hopefully you had a lot of fun.
We got some really good shots today.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the episode.
What questions you guys have about this
setup or about the methodology?
If there's something that you didn't feel
was covered, make sure that you leave it
in the comment section below.
I want to make sure that this
totally makes sense for you
so that you're able to recreate
this on your own.
While you're here make sure that
you subscribe to AdoramaTV,
there's new videos and new content being
dropped all the time, including episodes
of The Breakdown that you might have
missed in the past.
Make sure that you check those out.
Also, make sure that you subscribe
to the Adorama Learning Center
where there's more great content
for you to read.
Make sure that you follow Gavin
on social media, his social media
information is in the description for this video
as well as my own.
Make sure you give us a follow so
you can stay up to date on our newest
works.
Thanks so much for watching The Breakdown.
I will see you guys in the next episode.
Bye everybody.