What works for one person may not work for another

Setting up a studio

I've been trying my hand at taking portraits.  My wife, who is a saint, let me set up a small studio in our living room.  Quite frankly we don't use the living room very much, if at all, so transforming it to a small studio was a snap. Only one coffee table had to find a new "home". 

So I set up a couple of back drops, one black and one white.  I have a constant lighting rig as well as a Canon 580ex flash. I also have various tripods, umbrellas and other light modifiers. After listening to several podcasts and reading books on portrait photography, I thought I was ready to try some portraits.  

First, I tested on myself

The first shots I took were of myself.  I used my remote to activate the shutter.  After quite a few attempts, I finally got the constant lighting just right and took an acceptable portrait. It's the photo that is attached to my Google profile.  

The failed test!

Then came a test.  My daughter is starting her own makeup business, and I needed to take some glamour shots of my wife and my daughter that could be used on her website to advertise her business.  Obviously the most important part is getting a good image of their makeup to show off my daughter's skill.  I set my wife up with the constant light and every shot was blown out like this one. You could see some of the makeup, but the shots were not acceptable. 

I was shooting Aperture priority mode.  I couldn't get the right exposure.  So, I thought to myself, let's try manual mode.  This way I can set the shutter speed, aperture and ISO on my own to get a good picture.  

So, I set the aperture and shutter speed, but every time I pushed half way on the actuator, the exposure indicator on the lcd went down to -2 and what resulted was a black picture.  I, erroneously,  thought that there was a camera setting I had messed with which was making the exposure go all the way to black.  (More on this in my next post).  I still couldn't get the shot. 

Success!

Finally, I switched over to just using my flash.  I set the flash on manual mode at 1/16th power and a shutter speed of 1/200 and did some test shots.  I was finally happy with my photos.  Here's some examples of the shots that my daughter will be using in her makeup portfolio. 

As you can see, the final results are much better.  They highlight the makeup that has been applied.  The soft glow really makes the pictures feel warm and inviting.

I was sure that setting up these shots using constant lighting was going to work just fine because it had worked so well for my portrait. But in the end, I had to adjust what I thought I "knew" for another method that worked better for these images.

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