The "Big Picture" Portrait for Grace Magazine

I am very excited to announce a new portrait project. I have been hired by Grace Magazine to photograph women that are pushing creative boundaries and making a contribution in an artistic and humanitarian way to our world. Nancy Parent was the first subject in the series for the October/November 2011 issue of Grace magazine. I am very happy with the results.

Here is how I created the portrait for the folks that are interested in the geeky techy stuff… The photo was taken with a Nikon D700 camera and a 50 mm lens ISO 100, aperture 3.5, shutter speed 1/250th which is the fastest sync speed for speed-lights (of which I used two) I chose that exposure because it was just about a full stop under-exposed on the background making it a little darker than it would have been if  the landscape were the focus of the photo. This allowed her to really show up nicely and “really Pop” when lit properly. I triggered the lights with Pocket Wizards attached to the speed-lights and my camera, which make my lights fire at the same time as I push the shutter. You can see from my set-up photo that the main light is about 7 feet in the air and about 5 feet away from Nancy, just barely camera left. I put a diffusing dome right on the speed-light and then shot that through an umbrella which creates a very soft, sweet light shining down on her. The second light was positioned about 4 feet away from her, hard left, and I shot that through a spot grid to give a very specific focused light to define her and make her stand out more from the background. We got lucky with just the slightest breeze which blew her hair back and that is how we created this beautiful portrait!

To read more about Nancy and read the full article, visit   www.graceforwomen.com                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Here is the set up photo for Nancy’s portrait

Lighting Set up for Grace Magazine portrait session