Hurrah, I am open for business

Covid-19 has been good and back for me. I am a much better photographer now than I was before. Before lockdown, I was a bit lost, I knew the path that I wanted to go down but was still figuring out, how to create the images I wanted.

Coming out of lockdown, I am now much more confident in the work I am doing, particularly with my editing. Yesterday, I did a test shoot, with my good friend and occasional assistant Skins. Now Skins is quite theatrical in his look and came around with make up etc. The shot itself is very simple, I actually did the same shot 3 times with different light modifiers,

Initially I use a diffused beauty dish but I find their was a bit of a hot spot on Skin’s head, so I changed to a octa.

Shot with a beauty dish.

One of the interesting things, is the difference in compression between the final image and the above image. Both images where shot at 200mm but the first photo was shot slightly further away but the amount of compression is dramatically different. This I believe is down to the Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR2 issue with focus breathing. The Nikkor is notorious for having issue with focus breathing, which shortens the real focal distance the closer you are to the subject. So being just a few inches further forward on the final image has meant that I haven’t go the compression I have on the first image.

I did notice the difference straight away but because Skins has been working out, I think it suited his new look.

So, this being a test shoot, did I learn anything. Well firstly, wearing a face shield is not my favourite way to work and because I use a 1.2x eye piece it makes it harder to see. I also get very hot. I know that I need to set up the lighting/background before the shoot and if making any changes, I need the client to go out side. I need to place the hand sanitiser at the entrance of the studio for people to use coming in.

So overall it was a good shoot and I am happy with the image I got from it, though I did only the one setup, which I need to improve upon.