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Writer's pictureHaze Kware

One light portraits

Behind the scenes video feat. Charline Poncin

Tight spaces again, one backdrop, one light, or almost and the help of a filter for the last shots. If you are into portraits, on a budget, If you have only one light and no studio… then this one is for you.

This Behind the scenes video will be straightforward. I’ve done more portraits in the past year and a half than ever before. It was just the right time for me, more time at home and the will to do something different than my regular work. I am slowly going back to using flashes, not that I don’t like continuous lights, but for a lot of reasons I prefer using flashes most of the time for my photography.


I used the lightdome II from Aputure as a softbox for this session, with the GODOX AD 600 pro attached to it and 2 layers of diffusion. I am now using Gravity backdrops painted canvas for my portrait work. At first, we worked with a lot of ambient light in the room, but halfway through the shoot, I decided to reduce it because I wasn’t satisfied with my contrast ratio.



I still used a big white reflector on the other side of my light to slightly lift my shadows. Charline, is an experienced model, so I gave her a bit of room for improvisation.



In the video, you can see a 2nd light but I never used it. I just placed it in front of Charline for a few images for an additional catch light in the eyes.

But I did use a 2nd light for those white background images. It’s just my reflector that has a white transparent layer that was placed behind her. I used a single AD300pro to shoot through a Beautybox 65 and then directly into the backdrop. The first images were made without a filter, and then to accentuate slightly the light spill and add a blooming effect I used the K&F black mist filter.


Without any filter:



With the Black pro mist filter:


That’s all folks, I hope you learned something from this quickie. I am preparing a few videos where I use 3 to 4 lights. These will be fun. See y'all in the next one!



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