How to Take Powerful Character Portraits in the StudioHernan Rodriguez uses the Tamron SP 24-70mm VC, SP 90mm VC, and SP 70-200mm VC to make a connection with his subjects. |
Article by Jenn Gidman Images by Hernan Rodriguez |
Before Hernan Rodriguez starts a studio portrait session, the Los Angeles photographer does his research and sets the mood with his subjects. "If they're musicians or actors and I have the time, I like to find out as much as I can about them in advance," he explains. "The second part of how I work is to free-evaluate the person when we actually meet: I like to get a sense of whether they're funny or stoic or laid-back. I let their personality dictate how I approach the photo shoot to accurately capture the essence of who they really are. There's a lot of psychology behind each image." |
For his studio portraiture, Hernan relies on his three Tamron workhorses: the SP 90mm VC Macro, the SP 24-70mm VC, and the SP 70-200 VC lenses. "I typically use the 90mm Macro when I'm shooting three-quarter portraits or if I want to throw part of the image out of focus to concentrate on something that adds character to the model," he says. "The 24-70 is for my environmental studio shots, or what I call my midsized portraits: I incorporate more of what's going on in the background as part of my storytelling. And the 70-200 is for my more intimate photos. I like using that lens to focus on the face and eyes, while the background falls back into a fusion of colors and blur." |
Read on for Hernan's tips on how he achieves his signature character portraits. |
Show energy in the portrait by adding movement. |
I added energy with my lighting as well. The inner housing of the softbox I used was silver, which adds a sense of specularity that adds pop to my images. Instead of frontlighting, I brought the light from behind and enclosed my subject. The silver reflector bounced the main light back onto the subject and created that nice hairlight. |
Help your subjects strike natural poses that accentuate their personality and beauty. |
Hands are often the trickiest part of the pose-hey can be a distracting deterrent from the image. The cliche pose, for example, is for the subject to put her hands on her waistline. When you let them do their own posing, the hands usually automatically go to the waist. You want it to look natural-let the elbows tuck into the waistline and the hands fall naturally to the thighs (or lift the hands a little off the thigh and make them look a little more feminine by cupping them). |
Also, when you're lighting a face and hands are part of the equation, the light strikes the hand and can be as predominant as the face. You have to avoid that: If you have a hand close to the face, pull it back a little more toward the neckline and just have the edge of the hand showing. |
Incorporate the environment, depending on your subject’s personality. |
For Eddie's photo at the billiards table, I had to take some tricky lighting and the white balance into consideration as well. I use strobe, but I also had an incandescent light hanging over the pool table, which is a different temperature than my flash. And the red color will bounce back pretty hard onto the skin tones, which can contaminate your white balance. So I had to adjust for all that by adjusting my white balance to get a tone that was just right. |
Set the mood of a portrait with your lighting. |
Her agent wanted a clean, iconic portrait for her. She's very bohemian and came dressed very simply in all black casualwear, so that dictated my lighting setup. It's my job as a photographer to convey her in the best light, to project her as someone strong. I had to make her look regal in both the lighting and the pose. I wanted to show her as someone stoic, so I shot from a lower angle to give her more strength. The lighting was low key, not a lot of bright lighting. With the black background and black clothing, I simply shone a small softbox on her face; everything else was there to support that main light. |
Bring your studio outdoors. |
For this image, I created a scrim right above my subject and blocked the sunlight-which was this beautiful, window-type of lighting-coming through. I was able to control the light and cut it down about two stops this way. I bounced the fall-off back onto her with a silver reflector. I'll often bounce light back with silver, black, or gold reflectors; I also use black boards to intensify the shadows. |
To see more work by Hernan Rodriguez, go to www.hernanphotography.com or his Facebook page. |