cgardner Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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One solution is to do a full face portrait with a centered butterfly strategy in a small white room with low ceilings where you will get a lot of spilled fill. I shot this headshot with one with 580ex and single flash on a bracket with my DIY diffuser. I stood on a chair with top of diffuser touching the 8' ceiling of office at work to get max. spill fill
http://super.nova.org/MP/Ray02.jpg
Another option is forget the flash entirely, find a north facing window and use a reflector. This is and old example from an early tutorial of mine but it shows my basic "relaxed guy" pose using window light I learned apprenticing with Monte Zucker, who shot all his portraits with window light in those days.
http://super.nova.org/MP/WindowDC290C.jpg
Face angle 45° to window. Foot up on chair gets subject into the relaxed pose with shoulder line at angle leaning forward at the hips towards the window in an assertive masculine way with arms forming supporting leading lines for the H&S crop. I shot standing on a similar chair with him looking up. The higher POV is an important part of the technique. It results in the window light getting into the eyes better and a face-lift for chin and neck while keeping the camera and face at the same angle relative to each other as in a ground level face-to-face shot.
You can use the same "window" strategy outdoors on the shaded north side of a building. In shade so you don't need to fight the contrast of the sun. Face the subject north into the skylight, raising the face up by standing on a stool or ladder to get the skylight past the brow. Not needing to battle the sun you probably will not need flash. If you do add it do so from overhead on a bracket or stand not eye level so it acts as modeling "key" not flat fill canceling the natural light. The net effect of adding flash then adjusting the exposure for the same tone in the highlights on the face will be darker shadows. In other words adding the flash has the net effect of making the shadows on the face and background beyond the range of the flash darker.
In sunlight you can put the subject's back to the sun making it the "hairlight". To keep the hair from blowing out in the business shot expose per the clipping warning to keep the sunlit parts under clipping. As with the window or open shade you first want to pose the face up into the natural skylight to get it in the eye by bringing along a step-ladder to raise your camera. Then add your flash as "key" light in a butterfly pattern from above the head, not flat as fill, so the flash and skylight model the face from the same angle. The skylight will provide the fill, which you can supplement with reflectors just out of camera on the sides if you want the shadows lighter than the skylight alone makes them.
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