Sybase marketing portraits

This past Thursday morning I shot three young women from the Sybase sales and marketing teams here in Waterloo.

Here are a few examples of the portraits from that shoot, featuring Carolyn who is on the marketing team for the Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP). The glass blocks at the entrance to the firm’s cafeteria form an interesting background, with the glass exhibiting an olive-green hue from the ambient light in the late morning. For this shot, I used a three-light setup: a large softbox on my Novatron 500 mono light at 45 degrees for the main light, a smaller softbox, also using a Novatron 500 mono light, higher and to the left of the camera as fill, and a smaller, screw-in bulb slave for use a a hair-light. I had to be particularly careful with the main light to avoid its reflection in the glass blocks. Some experimentation confirmed that Carolyn’s photogenic side was the left, and we stuck with that orientation throughout the shoot.

In this shot, I’m once again using my Canon 7D with 24-105mm lens, this time @82mm. Exposure, like the image before, is 1/125 sec at f/11. This portrait was particularly pleasing, with the glass matching Carolyn’s eyes and the coral-coloured shirt complementing her facial tones quite nicely.

In this final image, Carolyn is posed against the black marble tile used in the main floor lobby. Here I used a two-light setup, a large softbox acting as the main light at about 45 degrees and to the right of the camera, and the smaller softbox as a fill light, located to the left of the camera facing the subject directly. This second light was necessary to fill the shadow caused by the main light, which failed to adequately reach the right side of her face. Exposure was 1/125 sec at f/13, again using the 24-105mm Canon L-series telephoto zoom lens @ 73mm. In this shot I omitted a hair light to eliminate the flare that it would cause against the marble wall. In hindsight, I will not be afraid to use such a light in future shots, since Photoshop editing of the marble to eliminate any glare would be fairly straightforward.

All in all, a very satisfying morning. My three subjects were both lovely and charming and I can only hope they are as pleased with their portraits as I am.