2016-08-02 – Uno [Portraits]

As part of my goal to expand my Portrait Portfolio, I got in touch with Uno for a couple of shots and thankfully last minute, we was able to arrange a quick shoot.

I referred to this shoot as ‘quick’ as I think actual shooting time was probably only 30min, the rest of the time it was just us having a little catch up with quick 5min burst of shots in-between.

As a photographer to model relationship, it’s good to keep up a social atmosphere for a more relaxed environment, but as old friends, it was pretty distracting to say the least! – In a good way of course!

However Uno was a pro when it came to game time! Very little direction was needed and this was actually one of the first shots fired off as a lighting test.

As much as I am looking to expand my portrait portfolio, I am also looking to attain a signature style and the only way I know how to do that is to shoot as many different styled shots as possible and then see which way I gravitate towards.

I wanted to see if I could do a more moody shot with just the facial features highlight along his profile. For this shot I placed him in front of the Octabox and right up close to get the sharp light fall-off along the side of his face.

I do like the above black and white styled photos, however for a more standard formal headshot, I chose to opt for a High Key look resembling Peter Hurley’s style of headshots. Peter Hurley does of course have a relatively complex lighting setup using Kino Flows, however opted for a simple one light set up on camera left with another flash for the background.

Unfortunately for the shot above, the background light did fail to fire but this was a simple correction in post as it is just a pure white high-key background. However having the flash successfully firing would make the post-production work-flow that much simpler!

Overall I am pretty happy with the shots so far. There are a few more that I do need to cull through and once I have gone through them properly I will select one shot to write up how I shot it, but for the moment this is just to quickly share some images.

If you would like to connect with Uno please check out his site at www.thisisuno.com.

Check out the music video for his track “Heels”.