The previous post showed Don under Parisian soft gray weather. In this picture that I shot in Atlanta, GA, we had great sunshine - great? Well I love sunny weather but it is not usually the best light you can get for portrait shooting as the main source (the sun) is very harsh and casts hard shadows that rarely make a model look good. But if the light is reflected in a proper way the reflector becomes the source and its large apparent size creates a softer lighting for your model. This is a good example: Jerome is lit by a reflector that is held in the direct sun light by my assistant Habeeb. Note the soft shadow cast by Jerome as opposed to the hard shadows around that come from the direct sun. I also used the curves in Photoshop to rebalance zones with different contrast.

Sometimes I shoot outdoors. In this case Don and I walked around Les Halles in Paris and took a few pictures with no additional light - just natural light. Check the pictures on my Facebook page; here is one that I liked because of the grey fall soft light; the overcast sky is one giant light box above the model’s head. I also liked the purple stickers on the glass doors and tried to play with them in this composition.

Strobes are great but I enjoy working in a fully equipped pro studio as well; for some shootings and for commercial work I rent one that is here in Paris - Studio Blad in the 9th arrondissement. They have great Profoto lights and all things that make your life easier when you bring in models, such as a kitchen, a shower and a make up desk. All you need to do is bring your camera and voilà. Here I shot the singer Don L Castor from LA who now lives in Paris; I used 4 lights (again): the main one was a big octogon camera right, two strip boxes and a snoot that lights Don’s hair and spills on the background as well, creating this nice little aura around him.

I keep using the Nikon SB-900 strobes for my shoots and I must say I am pretty satisfied with them; of course the power is not the one of an Elinchrom monolight (that I used before and still have it for e.g. photos of groups) but they can give you decent lighting (especially if you use several of them at the same time); interesting modifiers are not that difficult to find on eBay (and you can even DIY some more) and… they are portable and not dependent on external power. In the case of this picture I had the model, Ruben, over in my home studio so I could have used AC powered monolights but I really enjoy the strobes. Here I used four: one on each side of the model with a lightbox (square lightbox while ideally I would have liked to use strip lights), one behind to light the backdrop and one (main) with a beauty dish, on model’s left and above him. The rest is compositing with an old airline ad… More pictures on www.jancphoto.com or on my Facebook page.