Go For Those Subtle Changes

Sometimes the little changes and adjustments in a photograph can make a lot of difference.

In this post, I would like to cite three subtle and simple changes our crew for this assignment made which, in my humble opinion, made the photograph a lot better.

Before the photo above was made, there was this....

Actually, this is good. Our crew was already happy with it...I was happy with it. But since our subject's schedule still allowed him to spend time with us, I figured I can still make a little adjustment in my lighting set up.

Initially, this was lit by a single monolight at camera right. The light's standard reflector bowl was socked and was placed at an angle of around 45 degrees of the subject and placed approximately 8 to 9 feet from him. I wanted a small light source for this one, yet, I ditched the idea of putting a grid since I still wanted it to be big enough to hit the surfaces of the staircase. And since my light was placed far enough from these surfaces, it created long and deep shadows at the back (refresher: longer shadows are created when the light source is farther from the object being hit). A sock was then added to the reflector bowl just to tame the harshness a bit.

In addition to my single monolight setup and, as an adjustment to the lighting treatment of this photograph, I added a strobe at camera left, powered it down and flagged it to avoid spilling light unto the background. In my mind, I wanted this added strobe to just fill in the shadows of our subject's right side and at the same time make him pop out from the background.

Another adjustment we made was the placement of our subject's left hand, notice that in the first photograph made, his left hand was closer to his knee. We simply asked him to pull it back a bit causing him to be in a more upright position. This very small adjustment in his stance projected an air of confidence.

Lastly, our wardrobe stylist changed our subject's inner shirt with something that has more color thus making the photograph less monochromatic.

Honestly, I would like to give credit to our wardbrobe stylist this time. For me, what really did it for this photograph was the change of inner shirt.

Hope this helps. Happy shooting!