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Less is more – Portrait photoshoot

Updated: Mar 10, 2022

Behind the scenes video with Emilie


Sometimes, less is more and the more I grow old, the more I apply this to my work. I used to overdo things and take things a bit too far. It works when the work demands it, when you want a surreal look, or when a heavy contrast or oversaturated look suits your story. But for the majority of my work these days, making it simple is sometimes the best approach. Here is a portrait session, where I intentionally held back.

This session is also one of the first where I used my hand-painted backdrops from Gravity studio. I’ve been eyeing these since I’ve seen them used by other fellow photographers and thought I’d give them a shot. Emilie is new to my work, and this was our first time working together. She didn’t have much experience posing so it was also a great experience for me to direct someone who isn’t especially comfortable in front of a camera.


Gear wise we are working with the Canon R5 and the RF 50mm f1.2. I am using 2 Aputure LS300X and for some shots, I added the Pixapro optical snoot.


One 300X is used with a lantern placed overhead in the early shots and the other 300x is placed at approximately a 45°/ 90° angle camera right with the Aputure light dome II. My light placement will influence the poses. On this one, I only used the overhead light and asked her to look at the light and then close her eyes.

For the other shots, the shadows were my guides to fine-tune her poses. The Pixapro Optical snoot was used with the Godox AD600pro. I knew exactly what I wanted to create here, so we just had to experience a bit to place the light perfectly. And for my retouching and color grading process, I used between 5 to 8 layers (usually I have around a dozen and much more on more demanding creations) on these portraits, and here is a summary of the main ones used (in the video). I hope this helped some of you. I will see y’all in the next… but until then, please have a great one!


1 Comment


Absolutely love the simplicity and honesty in your process here, Emilie. There’s something truly powerful about knowing when to hold back and let the subject breathe. That restraint often brings out the emotion in the purest form. I’ve started doing the same in my studio work—stripping down distractions and relying on subtle light and clean backgrounds. For anyone else looking to achieve this minimalist aesthetic, I highly recommend using the WhiteScreenvip– 100% Full Screen Online Tool. It’s a browser-based white screen that’s perfect for soft lighting, clean headshots, or even DIY backdrops during portraits. https://whitescreen.vip/images/white-screen.webp

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