Last week we shared the output of our full-body portrait shoot for the careers section of Gongos Research.
Here’s how we did it…
Requirements
Remote shoot of nine people—two unique portraits each—for a total 18 images. Each image had to be extracted from the background, dropped into web layout and appear seamless.
Gear
- Six-foot white paper backdrop
- Three flashes
- Two Canon Speedlite 580
- One Canon Speedlite 430
- Two medium sized reflectors
- Two Westcott 32″ shoot-thru umbrellas
- Remote transmitter and receiver
- Painter’s tape
- Business card
- No assitants
Technique
The reflectors and support gear will clearly be in frame, but since my desired output is an isolated, tightly cropped portrait, I didn’t bother to shoot a clean image. More importantly, I didn’t have a dedicated studio, or want to lug around tons of heavy equipment—everything used for this shot can be stowed in your average grocery-getter.
Best of all, it’s cheap. The Westcott umbrellas are less than $20.00 at Midwest Photo Exchange, likewise for the reflectors; I have a large ($30.00) and a small ($20.00), I stuff them both in the same bag to save space and hassle.
Off Camera Flash
Although we typically use Pocket Wizards, for this shoot I fired my flashes remotely using the cheap-o Cactus units from Gadget Infinity: one transmitter on my camera, one receiver on my 580 Speedlite (set to master) and the other two flashes firing on slave.
Here’s a crude diagram of the setup, click for a larger view:
We have two Speedlites camera-left and one camera-right, pointed at the background of the white paper, giving a nice bright hot-spot behind the subject.
Reflectors
The reflectors are camera-right, parallel to the flashes, filling in shadows and bouncing light from the umbrellas.
As you can see from the poor-man’s setup, I simply have the lower reflector leaning against either the light stand or a handy chair.
Physical Setup
I always take a roll of blue painter’s tape with me on shoots. It’s handy for things that can’t be affixed to tripods or conventional mounts. Also, it doesn’t leave gunk on our gear or our clients. I used some to create a gobo with my business card—preventing light leaks from the rear flash. Note the blue bits in the upper-right of each frame, here’s a 100% detail crop.
I should mention that the flash is hanging upside-down on the light-stand, connected with a simple ball-bungee, a tip that we picked up from David Hobby at Strobist.
Final Result
A couple quick clicks in Lightroom and Photoshop and we have our isolated images ready to be dropped into the final web layout.
So there we have it, a basic setup and technique for shooting full body portraits.
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