Lighting Setup (Bar/Coffee Shop Portrait)

I hope everyone has had a great week! In this post I want to help you create some cool artsy portraits in a bar or coffee shop setting.  Everything below will help you get started and then you can take it from there and make it your own.  Click on the "Read More" button below to check out the gear I used as well as a lighting diagram.

Headshot How To: Mixing flash and ambient light (in low light conditions)

Living in Nashville I get the pleasure of working with a lot of really amazing clients.  One coolest clients I get to work with here in town is the iconic Sound Emporium Studios, which if you haven't heard of them it's definitely worth a google search.  I've been working with the Sound Emporium for a little over 4 years now shooting everything from the rooms themselves to product shots of the gear and even taking headshots for the staff.

In this post I am going to explain my lighting setup for the most recent headshot session I had with the staff.  One of the things that the Sound Emporium prides themselves on is the "vibe" of the studio so I wanted to try to capture that in the photos I took of the staff.  That being said, I didn't want to just shoot a basic white, black or grey background headshot and call it a day.  I needed to add some interest to the image which I did by placing the subjects in front of the recording console in one of the control rooms.  After I placed my subject, I used a simple two light setup and a shutter drag technique to capture the final image.  Keep reading to view the lighting diagram and camera settings...

How To: Simple 2 light portrait with no modifiers (kind of)

Here is a simple two light portrait that is sure to make any client happy.  In the title I stated that I "kind of" didn't use any modifiers, which was probably kind of confusing.... All I mean by that is that you can recreate this look with just two bare bulb flashes.  To take it up a notch, I added a blue gel to my backlight to give the image some more contrast.  keep on reading to view the lighting setup for this image...

Light Painting in Portraiture... (A Test Shot For A Job I Didn't Get)

A few weeks ago I put in a bid for a project and didn't get the job... I did however think the test shots I took for them looked really cool so keep on scrolling if you want to see how created the lighting setup.