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Portraits for a Musician and Singer

Portrait photography

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My client is Musician and Singer, better known as Adeola Ikuesan.

 

She is currently preparing her first EP. Her style has a strong impact of R&B music and also her roots in Nigeria.

ADEOLA IKUESAN

Photo by Veikko Niemi. 

Pre-production

Photo by Veikko Niemi. 

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Before the photo shootings, we discussed about my client´s ideas of music artist pictures for her and her album covers. ­­I established the common Pinterest board where we were able to share our visual ideas about interesting and cool photos. Here you can take a glance at the board:

https://fi.pinterest.com/alohko/studiokuvaus-n%C3%A4ytt%C3%B6-helmikuu/ .

During our discussions, she told me about her wishes. She preferred to have images starting from half body portraits to head shot portraits, but not too smooth pictures, preferably with contrast lights.

She suggested to take her African fabrics as costumes for shootings which sounded a great idea. Half of her relative come from Nigeria, Africa and therefore the fabrics played the important role at the studio. Somehow we started to discuss about flowers at the studio but my client told me that she prefers hays.

Together we ended up to use the warm yellow paper back drop. I choose the colour 169 Marigold, from the BD company Background paper, delivered by Finnish Studiovarustamo.

During our photo shooting session I asked my client to put some her favourite music on. We listened to R&B music to create more comfy and inspirational atmosphere. 

Contract details

At the beginning of photographing moment, we made an agreement of delivery, terms and use of photos between me and the client. I enclosed the direct link to the Terms and Conditions of Image and Media (Kuva- ja mediatuotannon Yleiset Sopimusehdot – KYSE2017) by Finnish Imagemakers Association.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1N2plDA2JpiKLOSLgYQO2SIqcuJiRYnpb . In addition my client signed the model release so I am able to use photos in my portfolio and work marketing. 

 

My client can use the photos (with photos I mean edited images) as long as she wants on the Internet and in Finland after uploading them. I added the detail that she cannot sell the images for anyone if she does not have a written agreement by me. I hid my Copyright into the feature metadata in Lightroom CC. 

Project equipment

  • Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark IV and Profoto Air Sync

  • The Lens: Canon EF 85 / 1.8

  • Seconic light meter

  • Back Drop Paper: 169 Marigold by the BD Company Background paper

I chose the 85mm focal length lens because it creates beautiful and well-balanced portraits. However, I took the pictures with f/8 aperture since I wanted everything in images to have a sharp look. I measured light with a Seconic light meter to ensure good lighting. A couple of times I added light power to get a brighter look on the client´s face. I tried a beuaty dish without diffuser fabric but it produced far too hard light. 

 

The value ISO was 100 and I shot with the 1/125sec flash sync speed because that speed match for the Canon 5D Mark IV model according to some reviews on the Internet.

 

All the pictures were taken both with RAW and jpg formats. RAW file formats are excellent for later editing in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Production - shooting in studio

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Photo by Veikko Niemi. 

Back lights - deep white umbrellas
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Back drop paper

We started  setting up the warm yellow back drop paper with my assistant Veikko Niemi who assisted me with lights and to take the Behind the Scenes photos. After that I showed him the lighting plan that was made with the LightingDiagram. Above, is the planned lighting plan and under, final one at the shootings. Further I explain my lighting choices. 

The client is standing about two meters from the back drop paper. Behind her, the paper is lightened by two Deep white umbrellas in order to get the flat and properly bright background for the client. These deeper umbrellas as backlights, did not have problems with light leaking and therefore I wanted to use them instead of less deep ones. Because of deeper umbrellas I do not need partition walls. I dropped a hair light away in order to avoid creating a too difficult set up at my first real studio photo shooting. 

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Key light - beauty dish

As the key light I used the 40 cm Beauty Dish with honeycomb 25 and diffuser fabric to make some smoothiness for the images. I wanted to use the beauty dish because it can be seen the both of soft and hard light. The key light was about 1,5-2 meters away from the client and about 30 centimeters higher than her and at 45-degree angle from both the camera and client. I asked her to feel the light on her face to be sure finding the right angle to light client´s face.

Fill light - 2x2´softbox
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As fill light, I took the square Profoto Softbox RFi 2 x 2´, and a couple of times I used also white diffuser reflector, Lastolite Professional, to open some shadows. I put the fill light lower than key light and about at the line of client´s ear.

The fill light softbox can be seen behind the photographer.

 

Photo by Veikko Niemi. 

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