Jimmy's blog

Snoot Portrait

October 8th, 2009

Andrew Rosenthal lately has me shooting for happier.com. It’s really nice to have shoots coming in regularly. They say the only way to get good at photography is practice, practice, practice and having someone call me on a regular basis holds me accountable to keep pushing that button with my finger. Thanks Andrew!

This time he had me shoot Dr. Martin Seligman, one of the leading professors in the field of positive psychology. This is a portrait I took yesterday that I really liked.

A snooted flash is placed at eye level about 3 meters to the right. Snooted means adding a tube to the front of your flash so the light comes out as a very narrow spot light. It’s zoomed in all the way at 105mm. When the flash is zoomed in all the way the light comes out in a very narrow beam and since all the light is concentrated we can set the power very low, 1/64 if I remember correctly. The exposure is set at the usual 2 stops below ambient. The other light sources are fluorescent lighting inside and daylight coming in through the window from outside. I pulled down the blinds to create a nice textured background and I was hoping to cast some nice subtle shadows which actually worked. Note the shadow lines on the back of his head.

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