The most run of the mill jobs are twenty minute location portraits of people who aren’t famous and who really have no idea what being photographed by a professional might entail. This image was shot on a wet day in a dull office in twenty minutes, so how was it done….

The subject must have little or no ambient light on them. The background ambient light must not be even, there must be light and shade, the greater the contrast the more dramatic the image. If you have, or can engineer these factors then you can follow these steps.

1. The subject is lit by flash and the camera is set to daylight balance. The Nash image is 200 asa, and I’ll give the settings for that shot as I go. So – you flashmeter the subject with the light source at about 45 degrees to the camera. In this case the flash reading was f5.6 (pack set to 50 joules). The ambient reading on the subject was two seconds at f5.6. To make sure that no significant amount of ambient light was on the subject’s face the shutter speed had to be at least an eighth of a second (or faster). (more…)