Photography Lighting for Portraits Out of the Studio

When we talk about portrait photography, a studio image automatically comes to mind, perhaps with a white background and artificial light. Rodrigo Chapa - Mexican photographer specializing in portraits - wants to challenge this imaginary, taking his portraits to different locations and giving them an aesthetic that could well be the frame of a movie by your favorite film director.

In this course you will give a new approach to your portrait photographs, introducing the location variable and what that implies: different compositions, study of the behavior of natural and artificial light and, of course, the design of the scene in the That your subject will be portrayed.

You will start by knowing Rodrigo, who will tell you about his beginnings in photography and his professional career. It will also give you a tour of some of the most important projects in which he has participated and you will discover his influences in the worlds of plastic arts and photography.

You will take your first steps choosing the type of composition on which you will work your portrait. Rodrigo will present several options and the advantages that each of them can offer you.

Next, you will define the three fundamental elements of your photo: location, model and styling , knowing the characteristics to which you will have to pay attention to make an optimal selection of each one of them. With that, you will determine the lighting scheme and, based on this, the ideal equipment to achieve it: camera, type of lights, modifiers and filters.

You will decide the equipment you need for your session. Some of the ones Rodrigo will use will be: camera, computer connected to the camera, lights, modifiers, shutter and filters.

You will go to shooting : you will do light tests to detail camera settings, light intensity and if you need color modifiers or filters. Once your adjustments are ready, you will introduce the model, you will decide the final costumes and you will detail the lighting, in order to start the final shooting with the previously planned poses and expressions, adding some spontaneous ones, until you achieve your ideal photo.

You will go to the postproduction process, in which you will preselect some images to adjust in Lightroom. Rodrigo will show you some of his favorite tools in the program to make light and color adjustments.

Finally, you will learn an efficient export process in Lightroom. You will see the output values of your final file, depending on the use you want to give it. You'll discover the compression features of Profoto and RGB, and see how to pre-configure the output of your images.

You will create a photographic portrait at a location, from the birth of the idea to post-production in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. You will go deeper into elements such as composition and lighting.

To photographers who want to learn a new portrait photography technique.

You will need to have an intermediate handling of a SLR camera, portable flashes and a RAW development program such as Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

As for the materials, you will need a camera with an angular lens, two or more flashes with some modifiers (umbrellas or white sheets) and a computer with Lightroom (or other software RAW development).