Portrait of a couple

Last week I have made an environmental portrait of a couple in their house. The mission was that they both would be well portraited while you can see clearly that the images are taken in their own environment.

At first I thought of making a photo at the kitchen table with the bright kitchen blurred out in the back, but this did not seem to work: the lamp on the table was too low and the blurring out just didn't work. Also, it could be any kitchen, right?

Instead of the kitchen we found out that there was an old framed map on the wall, the birth place of the man of the house. This would be the focal point of this shoot. Later we walked through the house looking for other nice spots, and we found one in front of the cabinet and special paintings: the lady's preferred backdrop.

The lady of the house warned me even before the day of the shoot, that she never looks good on any photo: "...so prepare yourself, Marc." When I look at the results it paid out to take plenty of time to have a little chat with a cup of tea, and do the shoot. Staying friendly and patient paid out here. Very seriously: "I am surprised that you could make this photo with me so relaxed and nice....".

Business portrait Mr. De Leeuw

Another business portrait? Yes...
When I have finished the complete assignment (currently the photos are in review with the customer) I post the best pictures here.
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I remembered that this post wasn't finished...
Sorry te be brief: these are the results.

Fatima's LinkedIn portrait (and then some)

Fatima, an ex-collegue of mine from Philips, liked to have a LinkedIn portrait, taken at her house. Of course, being ex-collegues, we spent the first hour chatting, before I started making preparations for the photo shoot in the living room. This all went surprisingly quickly so I had some time left for some family portraits.

How it's done...
Most of it is not different than my other photoshoots, although I am experimenting a bit with shallow depth of field, which is even visible in the face. The eyes, or maybe better: the closest eye is always sharp, and therfore most of the face, but not all of the head. This gives it a nice touch, to my opinion at least.
Because most of the backgrounds in the room were quite cluttered, or not very usable for a formal portrait, I narrowed the frame quite a lot with a long lens. With the combination of a very shallow depth of field the background is hardly recognizable anymore. Generally I do prefer to show more of the backround as shown in the photos of mr. Lenssen (link) which I made recently.

Also I played with some gels on the secondary flash. The red wall becomes more intense when spot-lit with a full CTO (color temperature orange) gel, over the heads of the children.

John's dog Ziko

John wanted to have a nice portrait. Not of himself, but of his dog Ziko, an american Akita.
Of course I like to try new things so John and I had to work together closely to get a good smile of the dog.

Here some of the results.

How it's done....

First, the dog must be at ease, but this was not easy. You can tell by the open mouth that he was not completely comfortable, although the result is a nice picture. To have the owner present is a must. 

The first pictures are made in front of a white background with a large window on camera left, while a flash is on camera right to balance out the light. 

In the last photo I tried to have a 'natural' frame around him created by the wooden panels in the back. It looks like a classic old-school dog photo.

Family portrait with 18 persons

During the dark days of the winter here in the Netherlands our neighbor Victor asked me to take a family portrait for and with his parents. I made it difficult for myself to stick to outside portraiture because it was freezing cold. So first composing with jackets on, then take them off and make the picture quickly...

Here the result
 

 

How it's done...

Some things I took into consideration where 1. to photograph from a higher standpoint to get a better spread of people, 2. still I put everybody close to eachother 'grouped' in individual families and 3. used artificial light (flashes) to let them stand out of the background. A small aperture on a wide angle lens (35mm, F8) made the picture sharp from front to back. 

I needed some photoshop to blur the grass and background a bit. And also, to get 18 good expressions, I combined two almost identical images for this result.

Busines portrait mr. Lenssen of Smartgroup (Vught, Netherlands)

It has been some time that I posted some of my photography work. I hope to keep it up for the coming shoots, and I add some results of previous shoots.
On the 30th of December I photographed mr. Lenssen of Smartgroup, the director of this company. Initially he wanted to have two photos: one for his social network pages like LindedIn, and one for general usaged on websites or publications, but when I presented the results of the shoot he wanted to have six.

Here some of the results.

 Mr. Lenssen with some of his artistic creations on the table.

 Casual, comfortable...

 Business....

Artistic background...


How it's done...
I relied mostly on my 50mm/F1.8 on my FF camera to get some of the background in the frame: THE most important added element of a business/environmental portrait. Because of its relative wide field of view I used some large apertures like F2.8 to F4 instead of the safe setting of F8 for longer focal lengths. Now I could blur the background slightly but not too much, so it is still well recognizable. A longer focal length like 70 to 200mm would isolate the head too much from the background, at least to my taste. The view is then both too narrow and too blurry.
Note the foreground-subject-background stack in the pictures, giving it a good sense of depth. One of the most important composition rules.
But don't forget rule number 1: the subject must be razor sharp.