(1)  5D w/35mm f1.4L, ISO 400, f1.8, 1/3200, TRA2 "Grandma's Tap Shoes" @ 50%. For this shot I had Norbert just hold Jenny from behind and waited for the smiles happen naturally. The ultra shallow depth of field is a stylistic choice that draws you to your subject's eyes.

(2)  5D, 70-200mm f2.8L IS, ISO 400, f4.5, 1/1250, TRA2 "Bullet Tooth" @ 50%. My favorite and easiest pose: I instructed Jenny and Norbert to take a stroll, hold each other and ignore the camera.

(3) 5D, 70-200mm, ISO 400, f4.0, 1/640, TRA2 "Pool Party" @ 60%. I like poses like this and have done them for as long as I can remember. The downside is that I'm beginning to see this same pose done by almost every other photographer these days.

(4)  5D, 70-200mm, ISO 400, f5.6, 1/400, Kubota "X-Process Combo" @ 40%.  X-Process Combo is probably my favorite action for color images. It really makes blues pop and ads color and intensity to nearly any image.

(5)  5D, 70-200mm, ISO 400, f4.0, 1/1000, TRA2 "Brooklyn" @ 100%. It's hard to tell here but for this one I had Jenny and Norbert run through this field. As I said in my "Posing 101" post, if your couples don't smile when running, they're zombies. "Brooklyn", by the way, is my favorite b&w action.

(6)  5D, 35mm f1.4L, ISO 400, f1.8, 1/6400, no actions - temperature was lowered in LR. You might be wondering why I didn't adjust my ISO lower on some of these images - why I kept it at 400 when this image, for example, could have easily been shot at ISO 100 due to my wide-open aperture. I could have switched it lower, but I didn't see any reason to. ISO 400 on my 5D is essentially noiseless, so rather than switching my ISO to keep it as low as possible for every shot, I simply left it at 400, which is my normal default ISO for cloudy days. That gave me one less thing to think about so all my concentration was on getting the shot I wanted, not fiddling with my camera.

(7)  5D, 70-200mm, ISO 400, f5.6, 1/1000, Kubota "X-Process Combo" @ 40%. The expression on Jenny's face makes this shot.

(8)  5D, 35mm f1.4L, ISO 400, f4.5, 1/1250, TRA2 "Brooklyn" @ 100%. This one is kind of the opposite of #1 - groom in front, bride in back. What you don't see is that in order to make the image work I had to ask the groom to squat down a bit. f4.5 is normally a small enough aperture on a wide angle lens to get two heads in focus, even if they're not in the same plane.

(9)  5D, 70-200mm, ISO 400, f4.0, 1/500, TRA2 "Lux Soft" @ 60%. Placing your subjects in tall grass is always a winner.

What do you do if you need to take a headshot on location in a room full of clutter? If you're lucky, you'll have a large, plain white wall to shoot against. More often than not, however, you won't.

The Westcott Illuminator background is the answer.  It's light, portable, and two sided - white / black.  With this portable background, you can create studio-quality headshots at practically any location.

The background folds into a disk 28" in diameter:

It comes in several sizes. The model I have is 6' x 5'.  Not enough for a full body, but good for a headshot or head & torso.

I love the white side for headshots. When you place your subject 3' in front of the background, it turns it into a nice medium grey.  Of course, you could light the background if you wanted a high key portrait.

The black side also makes a great background. This was shot with all natural light, just a sheer white shade pulled down over the window which diffused the sunlight, turning the window into a natural softbox.

As I've said before - simple, relatively inexpensive items like this Westcott background ($176 at Adorama) or Alien Bee monolights will make a MUCH bigger difference to your images than buying an $8,000 1DsMkIII.  The first portrait (of my little girl Annika) was taken with a 30D and 50mm f1.4 lens. The second with a 20D and 50mm f1.4 lens.  Not expensive gear by any means.  If I shot them with a 1DsMkIII + 50mm f1.2L combo ($9,500) but WITHOUT the background, the images would not be nearly as good.  Good technique combined with just the right gear will get you the results you want.

Imagine rummaging through shoebox after shoebox looking for photos like you did 10 years ago.

Imagine rummaging through stacks of CD cases looking for a particular song. In my case, most of my CDs are either out of the case (and thus scratched) or have been stored in the incorrect case (thanks MaryBeth!), making finding a particular CD a nightmare.  

Not a pretty picture, right? That's because you've long recognized the benefits of digitizing your media - photos and music.  The Amazon Kindle 2 is to books what iTunes is to music.  

Here's the Kindle 2.  As you can see, it's only slightly taller than your average paperback:

And it's about the same thickness as a magazine:

What's so great about the Kindle?

• Like the iPod, you can carry your entire library with you everywhere you go.  The Kindle 2 stores 1,500 books.
• Never lose a book again.  Ever spend an hour looking for a book in a box in your attic somewhere? Those days are gone.
• It's cheaper than buying books. Yes, the device costs $350.  But once you've purchased the device, buying books is much cheaper. You can get a book for $10 that's currently in hardcopy for $25.  And paperbacks are usually available for $6 or $7.
• It's much easier to read than a book. Unlike a hardcopy, you can adjust the font to any size you like. I read mine at the "old man" setting, the second largest font available. Regular books are now almost unreadable by comparison.
• The screen is very crisp, as crisp or crisper than most printed books.
• You never lose your place. When you turn the device off or switch to another book, it returns back to the page you were reading once you go back to it.
• It has a built in audio reader. No, it's not like having James Earl Jones read a book to you, but it does sound much better than most computer speech you're used to hearing.
• It has a built-in 3G wireless reader (no extra cost or subscription required) that let's you buy books anywhere and wirelessly download them to your kindle in one minute.
• You can read for about a week before needing to recharge the battery.
• If you lose your Kindle it's not a disaster. Sure, you'll have to buy a new device but you haven't lost your library. All the books you've purchased are archived by Amazon.
• You can subscribe to newspapers, magazines and blogs and have them automatically download to your Kindle.
• > 300,000 books available, with hundreds of new ones online every day. Amazon's stated goal is to have every book ever printed available on the Kindle.

1) I asked Bruce to sit down on a bench with Mabel standing behind him. Then told Mabel to put her arms around him and snuggle.  I stood back and shot this with my 70-200 @ 173mm. Pretty simple pose, simple shot. 

 2) A similar shot, except this time with Mabel in front. I just told them to lie on the grass in this position and asked Bruce to give Mabel a kiss.  I'm lying on my stomach to get this angle. This was direct 3 pm sun. Normally, I don't like to shoot with front light at this time of day, but you can make this light work. To avoid ugly shadows your subjects need to have their faces tilted upwards. Shot with my 70-200 at 170mm.  No actions used on this image, although I warmed up the white balance in LR to simulate early-evening (rather than mid-afternoon) sun. 

 3) Shot with my 24mm lens at f5.0 to get a big depth of field. For this image I wanted them both in focus. I asked Mabel to pull Bruce along the road. I was walking backwards right in front of them shooting continuously.  There's nothing like real movement to add life to an image. On a side note, shots like this are one of the few times that I wish I had a "pro" camera like the 1DmkIII, because of the faster shooting speed and larger buffer. On my 5D I have to take a few frames, then wait....and wait.... and wait...for the buffer to clear.

4) I asked Mabel and Bruce to be quiet, relaxed and contemplative for this shot. Even though it was extremely bright, I needed to bump my ISO to 800 because I was shooting at f22. Even so, my shutter speed was only 1/100. Remember, if you want sun stars you're going to have to shoot at tiny apertures.  

I was hired by a Udub (University of Washington) professor for an environmental portrait and head shot for her website and publications.  This tutorial reviews my thought process and setup for the shoot.

Step 1:  Analyzing the location

An environmental portrait shows a person in his or her surroundings. For example, showing a scientist in his laboratory. In this case, my client wanted a shot in front of her academic building. It was 1 pm on an extremely sunny day. So, how to set up the shot?

I decided to set up the shot so both the building and subject were in shade.  To do this, I used the shady side of the building as a backdrop and then placed my subject underneath the shade of a large tree.  By doing this, I was in total control of the contrast.

If either my background (the building) or the subject were in the sun and the other was in the shade, there would be too much contrast in the shot.  If, for example, I used the sunny side of the building as a backdrop it would be very bright and distracting from the main point of interest, which is always your subject.

Step 2:  set up your lighting

If this portrait was taken at a wedding, I wouldn't have bothered lighting it. I would have taken a natural light shot either in full shade or directly in the sun with the sun to my subject's back. However, this shoot was not for a wedding. I needed a totally different look, a professional, commercial look, which in my book means the shot should be lit.  

For lighting I used my 580exII flash on a stand with a shoot through umbrella. This setup is not powerful enough to overpower bright 1pm sun, and I didn't want sun in the shot anyway, so that's why I combined shooting both my background and subject in shade with the flash.

The flash was set on a stand just out of the frame of the camera, about 7 feet high, pointing slightly down on my subject from camera right.

Step 3: meter your background

My first step was to take a test shot without the strobe. I set my camera at my standard ISO 100, f8, 1/200 sec.  I was using my 5D with 70-200mm f2.8L IS lens.  Checking my histogram, this shot was about 2.5 stops underexposed:

This first test shot was too dark. I'm not talking about my subject here (since I hadn't even turned on my flash yet), I'm just referring to the background.  So I quickly just changed the ISO from 100 to 200 and the aperture from f8 to f7.1 and zoomed in on the background for this second test shot.  ISO 200, f7.1, 1/200 sec.:

Perfect!  I've now set up my camera metering so that my background is about 1 stop underexposed, which is the look I was going for.  My camera exposure has been set using only 2 test shots which took about 15 seconds total.

Step 4:  adjust flash power

Now that my background exposure has been set, it was time to turn on the flash and test the exposure of my subject.  I set my flash to manual mode at full power.  Looking at the shot and my histogram, my subject was clipping here, so I knew the flash power was too high.

Adjusting the power down about 1 stop gave me the right exposure on my subject. (yes, there is some shine on my subject's face, but that's not due to overexposure. I would take care of the shine in my retouching process) Here's my final test shot:

Step 5:  composition

Okay, now my location selection, shot setup, camera exposure and flash power are all set. Time to compose the shot.  Don't just point the camera and shoot! Ask yourself what message are you trying to convey with the shot.

In this case, I wanted to convey the message that my subject was a competent, confident, yet friendly academic.  I started by framing the shot with a fairly standard rule-of-thirds positioning of my subject.  The background establishes the fact that she's an academic. I asked her to cross her arms in a relaxed way and smile. Finally, I dropped down to a kneeling position so I could shoot slightly upwards. This did two things: first, it allowed me to get a better, bigger view of the academic building in the background rather than just the bushes at the base of the building. Second, it established my subject in a more powerful, confident position - one that conveys her professional expertise.

Lastly, the tree branches on the upper right and the bushes on the lower left create a kind of natural frame to the image.

So here's the final image. Remember, this was taken at 1 pm on a blindingly sunny day:

The headshot

My client also needed a tight headshot. A headshot has a completely different function than an environmental portrait. The background becomes unimportant. You're not trying to tell a story about your subject, you're just trying to capture their likeness in a favorable way. The background should be as distraction-free as possible.

Without moving my subject, all I did was to stand up and frame her head so that the dark bushes instead of the building were in the background. Camera position was about mouth-high, which is fairly standard for a headshot. I also zoomed in to about 150mm, which blurred the background nicely.

That's it!  The entire session from the moment I arrived at the scene to taking the final image took about 15 minutes.  Just remember the following steps:

(1)  Location: analyze your location and figure out how you're going to get the appropriate background with a manageable degree of contrast, especially if it's a sunny day.

(2)  Set your camera to manual mode and meter your background. Depending on the look you're going for, your background might be properly exposed, -1 stop or even -2 stops.  My default setting is to meter the background at minus 1.

(3)  Set up your strobe(s) and adjust them until you have the right exposure on your subject.

(4)  Compose your shot for the desired effect.

A note on sharpening:

I'm using a camera (the Canon 5D) that produces very crisp files. I'm using a lens (the Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS) that is tack sharp. I'm lighting my subject's face with perfect exposure. And finally, I'm using an aperture (f7.1) that maximizes the lens sharpness.  All this adds up a very sharp image so only minimal sharpening was required. I simply used Photoshop's Smartsharpen filter at very low power - amount 36%, radius 0.8.  This was plenty.

I'm a big fan of tack sharp images, but remember that your sharpening tool should be a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.