Studio Quality In The Garden

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Studio Quality Photos In The Garden

Not having a studio space to call my own, I often find myself working in whatever space I can find. This photo, which was taken as part of my on-going charity project, Moustachio Nut, was believe it or not taken outside in Sam's back garden. (If it wasn't clear, the person pictured below is Sam). But if I hadn't have told you, would you have known?

So, how did I achieve this look....

Equipment.

Lets begin with the equipment I used. Because I was mobile I wanted to travel light for this shot, managing to collapse everything down small enough to fit into the boot (or trunk depending on where you're from) of my car.

Camera: Nikon D750

Lens: Nikkor 24-120mm at 78mm

Lights: 2 x Elinchrom D-Lite RX4

Tripod: 3 Legged Thing (Winston)

Backdrop: Collapsible rectangular black and white

ISO 100 | f/16 | 1/160 sec.

The Set Up.

The set up for this shoot was really quite basic. I used one light to illuminate the backdrop, and the other above and in front of Sam.

Editing Process

Adobe Lightroom:

Temp: 5,550

Tint: +7

Exposure: +0.85

Contrast: +21

Highlights: -100

Whites: -34

Clarity: +10

Vibrance: +42

Point Curve set to medium contrast

Saturation: Red -31

Remove Chromatic Aberration

Enable Profile Corrections

Dehire: +28

Adobe Photoshop CC2018:

Once in photoshop I used the healing brush tool to blend away some of the highlights and to remove unwanted dust and blemishes.

Self Critique.

Looking back at this series of photographs I feel I would have benefitted from using the translucent side of a reflector, which allows the light in but diminishes highlights. By doing this I would have eliminated a lot of the highlights caused by the sunlight upon Sam's face. Even though I was shooting without any assistance, this could have easily been achieved by setting the shutter delay, allowing me time to get the reflector in place.

I hope you found this post useful. I aim to share posts like this regularly, so if you found benefit in this, consider following me so you don't have to remember to check back as you'll be notified every time I post something new. Before I go, I'd like to share a few more photos from this shoot.