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Originally Posted by wlverenefan
Hey Benji, I am interested in getting results like this also. That is a beautiful shot! Great work.
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Thanks. Some would have you believe that you can slap a speedlight on your camera put it of full auto and blaze away and after a couple of hundred shots you will get one that with about three hours of Photoshop work will look good. Perhaps this works for some but not for me. I prefer twenty to twenty two good shots from twenty five captures every time I shoot. Beautiful images are the result of thinking and planning and getting it right in camera. Photoshop should be used to enhance not to rescue. Here is how Kelli was photographed.
Technical stuff. My fill light was behind the camera, a large softbox feathered and set so I got a meter reading of f/4 at the subject. Main light was a medium softbox about 20 to 25 inches away from Kelli's face feathered (as always) set at f/8 which is two stops more than the fill light. The camera aperture was also f/8. I shot in Raw. The camera was a hand held Canon 30D with a 28-105 zoom lens zoomed out to 105mm and was in manual mode. Background/hair lights were at f/4. Care was taken to pose her torso at a 45 degree angle, all her weight was on her rear hip, then I asked her to bring her face back past dead center toward the main light then I had her bring her eyes back toward the camera (1-3-2 posing technique.)
After capture. I opened the image in ACR and did a white balance from my grey card I exposed previously, then I backed off the Black slider to 3, boosted the sharpening to 60% then I saved it as a Jpeg. In Photoshop I opened the image and retouched the few blemishes she had, brightened her eyes a little bit, vignetted the bottom, fixed a seam on her jacket and sharpened the image 75% then I opened the image in Imagenomic (a software program for portraits) and softened the entire image, then I erased the softening in her eyes, mouth, eyebrows and coat, flattened the image and resaved it to yet another file.
Hope this helps!
Benji