Sub-title: Shooting against a green screen in a back yard in the middle of winter
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| Malene's final selected file (photographer's version), comp'ed into an outdoor background |
January 2021. It has been a mighty tough time for so many people and not great for photographers of people. As I write this we are in a lockdown that for the most part precludes shooting, for obvious reasons. However, recently an old friend and colleague called to ask if there might be a way to do a headshot as her new career launch schedule had just accelerated somewhat unexpectedly and she had to have a professional portrait pretty quickly. She said that she wanted an outdoors shot which would fit well with her 'personal brand' (my words), and would allow us to shoot at a time when visits to indoor locations for any unessential purpose are forbidden/discouraged/not cool. So we chose her backyard as our studio.
I can tell you that as a photographer who has frequently pushed back at the idea of shooting outside unless there is a really good reason to do so due to the many varied many and varied potential drawbacks, but who was also dying to be shooting again, I leaped at the opportunity to make it happen with the caveat that there would be a few necessary compromises that we'd need to discuss and understand ahead of time. Things like my not being able to bring an assistant which meant my lighting would be a pared down version of what I normally do. And it would be cold, which would make it tough for her to look relaxed and happy. And I probably wouldn't be able to style her properly. So we set out secure in the knowledge that we might not actually succeed.
Before I go on I want to note that the image above is the one I optimized to a level that I felt satisfied with. Malene felt very strongly that her likeness should not be enhanced in anyway as in her profession as a psychotherapist authenticity is crucial. So for her version I had to stop short of what I'd normally do.
Here's the above portrait right out of the camera:
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| The sun kept going in and out meaning that the contrast ramped up, ie. the shadows got darker than I wanted every time the sun went behind the clouds. |
And here's the version Malene approved for her purposes:
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| The version Malene approved is less retouched than my final version. |
So how did we do this? The first thing we did was choose a date based on both the weather forecast and her availability. Of course the day before the shoot date the weather forecast changed and the pre-shoot day swapped weather with the shoot day… so we had sun on the pre-shoot day and clouds with snow in the forecast for the shoot day. Excellent! But we didn't want to postpone because temperatures were slated to drop by the following week, so we went ahead. Believe it or not I actually brought a fan, because Malene has fine hair which is longer than usual due to salons being closed and I knew a bit of a breeze in her hair would give it some volume and life. As it happened there was an actual wind so we didn't need to create one. Thankfully, periodically, it came from the right direction! In between it did things like this:
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| Obviously the goal was to shoot when the wind caught her hair perfectly, just enough to give it a little volume and life (not like this). |
We knew we weren't going to use stands for the green background as we needed to keep gear to a minimum and didn't want unmanned stands holding up what would effectively be a sail in the wind, so we tacked the green screen to the one fence that faced away from the ever-changing light (sun going in and out) and was tall enough to fill the frame behind a standing subject. Thanks to 36Pix's brilliant green screen knockout software the fact that the screen was not lit perfectly or stretched perfectly didn't really matter.
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| How uninspired does this scene look?! The hero shot at the top was taken when it was overcast like this. |
As I mentioned above one of the most important things when doing portraits is to make the subject comfortable. A profile portrait shoot is not like a fashion shoot where models get paid a bunch of money and have to suck it up and look warm in summer wear during between season shoots. There was no way Malene was going to be comfortable wearing a T-shirt outside in just above 0° weather, but she was willing to power through it. And I knew I was going to have to retouch out some nose and eye redness. When the sun did come out spasmodically, the slight increase in warmth was hugely welcome, for Malene anyway. And aesthetically it was nice, throwing lovely backlit highlights onto her hair.
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| An alternate version, not retouched at Malene's request, with different hair, sunny highlights and a different background. |
Other compromises included using a far smaller light modifier than I normally would, and using only one light, resulting in harsher shadows on Malene's face which I had to mitigate during retouching. I am a big believer in getting the exposure as close to perfect as possible in camera rather than having to "fix it in post", but this time I had to work with what I got. And I knew I captured enough to ultimately achieve what we wanted.
It's an important step to be able to review captures with the client prior to wrapping, if at all possible, so as to ensure that we've really captured the magic (ie. shots the client loves). (If we haven't we shoot more.) But during Covid we have to do this at a distance, so I attached an external monitor to my laptop and she took that inside with the door cracked open so we could hear each other speak well I stayed outside.
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| Left: Moving my laptop closer to the house. Right: Setting up an external monitor for Malene to take inside to review the images. Photo credit: Malene Johansen |
Do I recommend shooting business portraits outside in winter, or ever? Well, let me summarize why we may question shooting shooting outside (beyond the obvious question of whether being outside is relevant to one's personal brand):
- Can't control the weather
- so shoot dates may have to change last minute
- may have to deal with changing light (e.g. as sun moves), or not ideal light
- may have limited control in terms of the direction of available light/sunlight relative to background and subject ie. the best available, most appealing background may not line up with the best light for the subject
- lighting may be compromised unless extra crew is hired to man lights and appropriate modifier(s)
- subject may be cold or hot (ie. not comfortable or relaxed)
- may not be able to keep hair style, or make up under control
Unless a specific outdoor location is significant or meaningful to the portrait or the subject will be interacting with it… for example sitting on outdoor furniture or leaning on a tree, one might ask what the benefits would be to introducing all these variables into the equation when you can shoot indoors on green screen and put in one of the many backgrounds your photographer has collected in her "outdoor portrait backgrounds" archive. ;-)
That said, it can be done! In October 2020 in between lockdowns when it made slightly more sense, and I do mean slightly more, to be outside, we did a huge multi-day people shoot outside on green screens, and in that case there was no "maybe"; the shots had to be great. I'll write about it in an upcoming blog.
Hopefully soon the world will open back up, and I look forward to working in close proximity to people again then! In the meantime if I may be of any assistance please do not hesitate to reach out. Thanks for reading!
