Black and White Portraits – Lighting with Speedlites

This is a part of a portrait series I’ve done with friends and students at Riguardare photography school.

The idea was to mix a little of the ambient lighting with the strobes, creating a dramatic effect.

The light was set up with three Speedlites, one 420EX with barn doors lighting the background, one open 550EX from behind the subject, acting like hair light and also as a kicker, both of them in the group B, and a 580EXII with a great round diffuser as the key light in the upper front of the subject, in the group A. A white reflector at the waist level of the subject was used to add some fill to the shadows. The ratio between groups A and B was 1:2, and the flash exposure compensation was set to -1.

Exposure was set to 1/30s, 400 ISO, f5.6, this way we got a little exposure for the ambient light (underexposed by two stops), adding some fill and ambience without getting too much noise, the depth of field was shallow so I had to pay extra attention on focusing. The lens was the Canon EFs 17-55mm f2.8 on a Canon EOS 7D.

Here are the final images:

Simões, a friend and fellow photographer

Neide Comodo, a friend and director of the Riguardare School of Photography

This is me but this is not a self portrait, this picture was taken by my friend Simões.

Hope you liked it.

All the best,
Armando Vernaglia Jr
www.vernaglia.com.br
vimeo.com/vernaglia
@VernagliaJr

Lighting street portraits with Canon Speedlites

This is a part of a portrait series I’ve done of my students at Riguardare photography school. I will not post the entire series since this class has 18 students, so I selected three pictures which mainly exemplify the lighting set up used that night.

The idea was to mix the street lighting with the strobes.

The light was set up with two Speedlite 420EX from behind the subjects, acting like hair light and also as a kicker, both of them in group B, a 580EXII with a great round diffuser as the key light in the upper front in group A, and a white reflector at the waist level of the subject. The ratio between groups A and B was 1:2, and the flash exposure compensation was set to -1 and 1/3.

Exposure was set to 1/30s, 1250 ISO, f2.8, this way we got a good exposure for the ambient light without getting too much noise, the depth of field was very shallow so I had to pay extra attention on focusing. The lens were Canon EFs 24mm f2.8 and the camera is a Canon EOS 7D.

Here are the final images:

Hope you liked it.

All the best,
Armando Vernaglia Jr
www.vernaglia.com.br
vimeo.com/vernaglia
@VernagliaJr

Lighting a portrait with Canon Speedlites

This is a portrait I’ve done of a great friend of mine, Ricardo, who is a very talented marketing professional.

The idea was to bring a nocturnal feel to his portrait, just like if he was looking to a computer screen and thinking about his marketing decisions for the next day at his work. To achieve this look I decided to add some blue cellophane to the strobes (it is good to tell that blue gels, blue cellophane and color filters can give you colors that are impossible to achieve only with white balance settings, so go on with filters/gels/cellophane and whatever other colored materials you find!).

The light was set up with two Speedlite 420EX (yes, a pretty darn old but yet useful strobe!) from behind his back and bouncing on a white reflector at his front to add some fill light on his face.

Exposure was set to 1/200s, 100 ISO, f5.6, this way the low ambient light was completely suppressed, the depth of field would be shallow but not very critical, and the only source of light would be the two 420EX with blue cellophane. The lens was the Canon EFs 17-55 f2.8 USM set at 55mm.

Flash exposure compensation was set to -1, otherwise we would end up with a too bright lighting for our original nocturnal idea.

So here is the final image:

Hope you liked it.

All the best,
Armando Vernaglia Jr
www.vernaglia.com.br
vimeo.com/vernaglia
@VernagliaJr

Using light to add depth to some graphic designs

Hi guys, I’m here again trying to keep this blog updated.

Now I’m posting some photographs I’ve done for a graphic designer and an old friend of mine, Leonardo Ribeiro Borges (his web site is under construction, link soon).

The most interesting part of this job was to put some depth and pespective to a plain material, beacuse his work consists primarily of catalogs and posters.

To achieve this more tridimentional sense, I’ve decided to use a very harsh light and play with some shadows, using honeycombs and snoots instead of softboxes.

For this kind of light I usually use two or three Canon 580EX II and Interfit Strobies accessories

The results:

All the best,
Armando Vernaglia Jr
www.vernaglia.com.br
vimeo.com/vernaglia
@VernagliaJr