The Profile I
June 21, 2021The Profile
My Father- In- Law was in town recently and I wanted to make a portrait of him. While I was at it, I planned on chasing down a couple of my children so I could update their portraits for our wall.
The first image shown above is the image Daniel chose to put on the wall.
After grabbing some shots that would accommodate our wall, I wanted to try something different: a Profile Portrait. My subject was about to lose patience, because we were well past his 10-minute endurance; however, I pressed on with the hope that he would not fire me and walk out of the room.
The first thing I did was to designate the edge light that I was using for the first series of shots for the wall, as the main light. That light was to camera right. It was a Lumedyne head in a Godox softbox. Next, I turned the main light way down to provide some fill on his shoulder and the back of his head. That light was an Einstein inside of a Godox softbox.
My goal was to use Rembrandt lighting on his face and also have some detail on the back of his head and shoulders.
The room I shoot in only allows a very small area to work in, so I had some issues with the light to camera right spilling into the frame. I was able to mask that out pretty easily in post-production. I also desired to compose the shot horizontally rather than vertically, but I didn’t have enough room due to the width of my backdrop. So, I shot this vertically and cropped it in post.
The first image is uncropped. The second image is cropped horizontally, and the third image is cropped vertically but shows less of the torso. I think I prefer the third image.
I am not displeased with the shot, but I plan on practicing more profiles over the next few weeks. One of the things you have to do is provide enough support for the head so that it does not appear to hang in the air unsupported. If Daniel were turned completely perpendicular to the camera, his head would not look proportional to the body. It would look “unsupported” by his body.
I should have taken some sample images showing the process of building this image. I will have to keep this in mind as I explore the world of Profile Portraits.
I almost forgot. I talked my Father-in-Law into posing for a Profile portrait also. I will provide an example of that portrait when I get back into town.