This is my buddy Ross. I’m doing a website for him at the moment and he wanted a few formal shots taken to go on his bio page. As with quite a number of the shoots I do, the actual shots that meet the brief of the project aren’t that interesting to me. They’re professional and functional, but don’t say anything interesting.
So to satisfy my creative urges I take a few shots while I have a victim under the lens, of which this is one.
One cheeky way to get a nice thoughtful looking pose like this one is to suggest a technique for getting a natural smile to the subject. By looking away from the camera for a moment before the shot is taken, you explain, taking care to keep an neutral expression on your face and then only smiling when turning to look at the camera, a healthy natural smile is achieved, helping to avoid that held-too-long-forced-smile that everyone is so keen to avoid. This technique actually works quite a lot of the time, but it has the added benefit of allowing you to snap off a shot of your subject looking thoughtfully off into the distance in between smiles.
The setup for this shot was to use three Bowens GM250 studio strobes. One with a softbox camera right and in front of and pointing at the subject, one through a snoot camera left and to the rear of the subject to give the edge highlight on the left of the subject’s face and head, and one on a floor stand with a beauty dish to the rear of the subject pointing at the backdrop to give the glow on the backdrop. I’ll post some shots of the setup soon.