At lunch today I wanted to experiment a little at a fast yet affective lighting and camera setup for portraiture.

Well this is what I used and how I used it.

Camera: Nikon D80

Lens: 50mm F1.8

Filter: ND8 (to help with exposure levels, it was bright out, don’t hate me)

Flash: SB-600, (using the built in flash in the camera as a commander unit to trigger the    external flash)

Light-Modifier: Westcott-Micro Apollo

Tripod: Giottos MT 9370

While waiting for my friend, I setup my tripod, camera and flash with modifier. I preset the exposure to 2 stops under.  At this point my friend co-worker and fellow photographer Jim showed.  I had him stand out around 5 to 6 feet from the lens and to the left of center of frame.  A few exposures to dial in the flash power and position then began creating a few proper exposures, while I continued to work with the position in relation to the subject (Jim) until I came up with something close to what I was looking for.  Since this was a short, fast experiment at lunch.  I didn’t want to spend too much time fine tuning the image.  The point of this experiment was to see what kind of image I could create in a short bare bones time frame.

Well this is the last image in the line of exposures.  I am posting both the RAW unedited as well as an edited version of the final exposure.  Hope you enjoy.

Jim in the RAW!

Jim in the edit.

What I did, I created 2 adjustment layer one for Levels and one for Curves.  Adjusting lightness, color and contrast.  On a 3rd layer I used the clone tool to take out highlight hot spots, a few blemishes and a stray hair or two. Then I made a 4th layer as an additional adjustment layer to modify the levels again and then isolate the modification to the eyes only to brighten his eyes just a touch. Just like when I created the exposure I didn’t want to spend a lot of time editing. Oh and I cropped the image to slightly reframe and create a more pleasing composition. I could have spent more time taking out the wrinkles and smoothing the skin tones, and on and on. Well this is how it turned out, not too bad for a 5 minute or so …. portrait.

Let me know what you think. I really would like some feed back, I am always looking to improve and to grow as a photographer.  Thanks