In-studio portraits outdoors
Despite having the means to produce in-studio portraits more often than not I’ll go outside to one of my favourite spots in order to take portraits. There’s no setting up or breaking down of equipment, just a short walk to and from the location.
As I’ve mentioned briefly in another post my location of choice are bridges and underpasses. They provide a nice fall-off of light and shelter at the same time.
For this set of portraits I was using the Brenizer method which involved taking several close-up pictures of the head and shoulders and piecing them together in post-production.
With this particular set-up this turned out to be a risky business – unnecessary even. It’s risky because the close proximity of the camera can make for some unintended distortions to the face. And it can also be unnecessary if you’re using a plain background like the one that I’m using here since you don’t really get the benefit of the extra shallow depth of field that is often the purpose of doing the Brenizer method in the first place. I think that I could have got away with using just one photo cropped on the face and building up the shoulders with extra shots rather than the 12 shots that I was using to make up each photo.
But one positive of this experience was the realisation that you could capitalise and embrace the unintended distortions to the face. Even with the distortions hidden in post-production they can lend a sightly weird look to a portrait. And, of course, you take it even further and make the distortions more obvious for artist effect.
The first picture of the following set wasn’t taken using the Brenizer method – it’s a straight portrait taken with a Fujifilm X-Pro 1.
Subscribe to receive updates