Trying to capture qualities in a purely visual way is often difficult, because what we perceive or feel, or even seem to see, about something is not always what we actually see. And that in my opinion is the beauty about portrait photography. Some days you get the chance to capture the personality and on some you capture unflattering and unattractive pictures.
My main light was a soft light reflector P-soft in combination with a honeycomb grid. The light shaper was placed on the right side of a model at an angle. It was responsible for illuminating the right side of the models face. I didn’t want any reflections of the P-soft in the eyes to get the mood I desired.
Of course what I than noticed was that the left side of the face stayed in the dark. The solution was to use a white reflector to create some fill-in light, but also to make sure that the look didn’t lose character. Don’t be shy to vary the distance with your fill-in reflector.
My second light was HMI. The 400 HMI with barn doors was placed behind the model and created the wanted hair light and on the shoulders.
My shutter speed was ¼ s and was responsible for the blurry look of her hair.
Converting the image into black and white just gave it that specific look.
