Environmental Portraits of the CCBR Director, Part I

Jovana Drinjakovic, the writer for our research institute, contacted me in March about helping her set up a photo shoot with the director, Dr. Brenda Andrews. Jovana writes up news articles and press releases for the Donnelly Centre to highlight various researchers when they win awards, or have their research published. Although Dr. Andrews is frequently in the news for her various accomplishments, Jovana only has a very small pool of "stock" portraits of Brenda for her writing and needed a greater variety of images to use with her PR work.

Location Scouting

One of the locations in our building that I thought would make for an interesting backdrop is located directly adjacent to the front entrance. This spot has a nice juxtaposition of the warm brickwork of the building next door against a cool glass sign with the name of the building. There's also the beginning of the bamboo gardens just off the the right and a broad flight of steps leading up to the the main floor. The variety of textures and tones are interesting, and the sign provides an important context for the portrait and who the subject is. The front of the building has a large multi-story glass facade, allowing lots of natural light into the main lobby. I was a little concerned about A) direct harsh sunlight in the afternoon because our building is south facing, and B) a green cast from the windows. A quick scouting of the location below showed that the sunlight was not a problem for out 2PM scheduled shoot time, although I was still a little worried about balancing the green cast of the ambient with my speedlights.

Test shoot with Jovana

Jovana agreed to act as an assistant/stand-in and I set up a test shoot a couple of days before the main shoot to play around with some ideas and get the lighting and settings nailed down. We wanted to try and get a couple of different looks in the lobby area, including a close portrait headshot with the bamboo in the background, but we were going to be very limited in time with Brenda present and needed to have everything, including camera settings, flash power and positions and subject position marked out in advance. I wanted to light the image with a big ( 7 foot, octa-style umbrella with diffusion front) modifier just off to camera right as the key to add a beautiful layer of unobtrusive soft light. I added 1/4 CTO gels to the speedlights inside the key to complement the skin tones and colour of the brickwork. The natural window light worked as a general fill, and the green cast wasn't too much of a problem with a custom white balance. The only other problem we had to deal with was pedestrian traffic, as we were set up right next to the main entrance of our research institute. I solved that problem by blocking off the area with a background setup, ie. two stands with a 12 foot bar stretched between them, forcing people to go around the set.

I wanted to draw a bit of attention to the sign as well, and also cool it down to provide contrast against the brickwork and subject, so I positioned a speedlight just off to camera left, aimed directly at the sign, and put a 16-degree grid on the front to restrict the light just to the centre of the sign with the name. I put a light blue coloured gel on the end of the grid to provide that cool pop of colour, and had to crank up the power quite a bit because the reflectiveness of the glass sent most of the light off away from the camera.

I was happy with the overall lighting levels and colour tones, but after going over the images, I thought that I should also add some light to the bamboo leaves at the back right of the image. I figured the best way to light the leaves with a broad warm source would be to bounce a speedlight off the bricks around the corner, and let the warmed up bounce illuminate the foliage. I also thought it would be a good idea to get down into the gap between the railing and wall and clear out some of the dead leaves scattered about. Here is a setup diagram for the final lighting of the image.

When shoot day came, the overall ambient light levels were a bit lower than before because of the weather outside. That was easily solved with a bit of adjustment to the shutter speed, which allowed me to bring up the fill from the windows without affecting the flash exposure. I arrived and started setting up about 2 hours early to make sure everything was right and the shoot went off without any issues.

Despite her apprehension, Dr. Andrews was a perfect subject who gave off a lovely warmth, was very receptive to direction, and worked well with us to get some great shots. After the photo set with the institutes sign, we shifted over to the stairs to do a series of headshots, with the garden as a backdrop, which I think turned out great as well.

To be Continued...