Corporate portraits with style…………
Everyone in business should look their best and project themselves in a positive way to their customer and client base. It’s a fact. Whether it’s a corporate PR portrait, a profile picture for Linkedin or other social media or just a great headshot Republica is here to take care of your needs.
These images are shot using portable lighting and paper backdrops which can be easily set up on location in your workplace for example. Shooting with lighting gives the images impact. I’m sure you would agree they are striking.
One more for good measure……………
Please do get in touch to discuss your corporate/business portrait/headshot requirements.
Whether you are a small local business or a large established company Republica absolutely loves to shoot this genre.
Oubliette.
Showcasing a few images from this one of my absolute favourite sets featuring the wonderfully collaborative Eloise.
Together we’d been working on this concept for quite a few months until we finally brought it to life. We’d been looking to create an avant-garde concept with more than just a hint of darkness. Now the ruff collar, which was indeed central to the theme was made (very kindly) by my mum! Why not? Hopefully you’ll agree that it looks fantastic in these images.
Eloise is a skilled makeup artist and she created this amazing look which in my opinion smashed our theme out of the ball park.
Add some amazing poses to the theme and a little special sauce in Photoshop and we achieved (I’m delighted to say) a dark and creative editorial that was published in Femme Rebelle Magazine.
Now just to clarify this was shot on a shoestring in a small room at my house. One light. A home made accessory (the ruff collar) coupled with a cheap pair of Ebay gloves and an old belt belonging to my wife. The point? Well the point is that you can make interesting and creative images on a small budget……….all you need is a great model and a little imagination.
Now Eloise herself has taken her creative talents and opened a studio recently together with her partner.
More information here
Hope you like the images as much as we enjoyed making them.
Break a leg.
Well it was actually a badly broken knee which you’ve probably heard me banging on about before now……….sorry ’bout that.
I was absolutely delighted to get back to photography last June as you might imagine after a fairly long hard slog back to fitness. I use the term ‘fitness’ pretty loosely here as I reckon I was at about 70 percent recovery at that point in time.
This image featuring the very lovely Beckii from this particular shoot is one I am very fond of.
It was the culmination of a pretty long period of inactivity and really a feeling of uselessness on my own part………to start making images again felt absolutely fantastic.
Now Beckii nailed this. I love the pose and the attitude.
Lighting is a simple one light in an octabox boomed directly out in front and overhead set up. I love to light female subjects in this way. Sometimes a cross light pattern can be nice (and certainly more dramatic) but I love the flattering shadows that the overhead lighting gives.
Hopefully you like the image.
The knee is at about 90 percent these days (in case you were wondering).
More on Beckii here…………….
Breaking the rules.
………..yeah.
Pretty ironic title for me as my wife will tell you that I’m a stickler for the rules. To be fair though I don’t mind breaking a few in photography. It’s my art……..my rules. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do this or that as it doesn’t follow the rules of photography. How would they know your artistic vision? I’ve seen a lot of squabbling online over various technicalities over the years. I stay out of it, and I do……….exactly what makes me happy.
So what photography crime have I committed I hear you ask?
Don’t worry it’s nothing too bad……….perish the thought.
I sometimes shoot beauty images with the Canon 17-40L.
I know…………………serious rule breaker.
Why would you choose this wide lens for portraiture?
Why not?
Okay well let me tell you WHY instead.
I light images like this with the large beauty dish. The dish is boomed directly out in front of the subject’s face and tilted down at a fairly shallow angle. I use the sock on it for extra diffusion (I absolutely love the light when modified like this) and I place some white foam core at chest height to fill the shadows. The dish is placed extremely close to the subject at approximately the same distance as the diameter of the modifier itself. So the 22 inch beauty dish is placed at a distance of roughly 22 inches. This is a pretty tight working space as I’m sure you’ll agree. The wide lens comes into it’s own here allowing me to shoot from directly under the beauty dish (with the lens hood literally touching the bottom edge of the dish) now I know this might not be for everyone but it certainly works for me.
A couple of things to note here though in case you were thinking of trying this technique would be to be very careful with keeping the plane of the lens level or flat to the subject………wide lenses can cause a lot of distortion if angled incorrectly and we don’t really want that…..well……unless it’s intentional of course.
The last tip is regarding the lighting. By booming the beauty dish out directly in front in this manner you can adjust the height of the light up and down which in turn will give you deeper or shallower shadows under the nose, lip and chin. Adjust to your own personal taste. It’s easy and effective. This image of Ava was shot against a painted white wall at home.
I hope you like the image and the technique.
I’m getting back to my rule following reality now.
Until next time.
Publication in Twisted Edge Magazine.
It’s always nice to have some work featured in a publication so I was very happy to hear that some images from a set I shot with Miss Kandi K before Christmas were to be published in the February edition of Twisted Edge Magazine.
Here’s a couple of images from the session.
Backdrop by Kate Backdrops here
Getting creative with the lighting.
“Slice” ft Rue Moriah
I love to experiment with lighting during my model shoots and I’d wanted to try this technique out that I’d seen used by the master Joel Grimes for a while.
It’s a relatively simple lighting setup but hopefully you’ll agree that the results are quite striking.
The first step is to get the backlight right. In this case the background is a large octabox placed directly behind the subject’s head. You have to bring the power up just enough but not too much as to blow out the highlights. A good way to check this is to enable the highlight alert on your camera (the blinkies) or if shooting tethered it’s easy to check the highlight clipping on the histogram in Lightroom. Simple trial and error will get you to the right place in just a couple of shots. I particularly like the way light wraps around the subject’s face as a result of this.
Nest step is to establish the main light. For this I’ve used a Canon speedlight inside a Rogue grid to create a tight beam of light. To make it even tighter I fashioned a slit over the front of the grid using two pieces of cardboard and some tape (I wanted that beam of light to be really tight)! I boomed this light directly in front and aimed down at Rue’s face and adjusted it until we got it right.
The black and white edit was intentional to really emphasise the contrast.
I hope you like the image.
Joel’s video on the subject is most definitely worth a watch and can be viewed here
Model//Rue Moriah
Getting down to business.
I’ve been very busy with the camera this past few weeks working on various new projects. Shooting corporate headshots and professional portraits I find both extremely enjoyable and very rewarding. Meeting so many new and interesting people along the way is an added bonus for sure.
More on this particular session later but for now I’ll leave you with this image of Stephen that I shot on location in Coventry at his place of work recently.
Republica is available to shoot headshots, corporate portraits and profile pictures. I think you’ll all agree that everyone should look their best in the business world. I’d like to think that I can help you to achieve that objective.
Please do get in touch to arrange your headshot/portrait session.
