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Continuing Professional Development for photographers - part 4 of 1 2 3 4

by Damian McGillicuddy Published 01/12/2016

We’d metered the ambient light and found that it was ineffectual for anything we might want to do with it; there wasn’t enough for it to be a key light and there was hardly enough for it to be fill, so we chose to ignore it. This had an extra advantage: since we weren’t dealing with any ambient illumination, we could go with the white balance that the flash afforded us and didn’t have to worry about colouration from anything in the room.

We then added a very subtle blue-gelled accent light, just to strike James’ jaw line and add a bit of separation and backlighting off his cupped hands. The key light was a very simple reflective brolly, positioned very close and raking down the face for effect and acting a bit like a beauty dish. Both the FX and the key were manipulated by voice-activated light stands, aka a couple of kind volunteers from the audience that boomed them manually for me.

Finally, because our 'Ali G' inspired image was a bit stylised and quirky, we finished off the look by shooting on the Olympus 7-14mm f2.8 PRO Zoom, relishing the distortion that we could elicit with the lens. People say you can’t shoot portraits with wide-angle lenses, but my understanding is that you can pretty much do anything you want as long as you know what you’re doing!

If you want to find out more about continuous professional development, or learn some of my lighting tips and tricks, or even come and have a play with the incredible new Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II, come along and see me at the Convention in January! Not only will I be giving talks, in addition to judging in my role as Head of Qualifications, I’ll also be popping up on the Olympus stand - and most exciting of all, this year we’re bringing back the 'Rolling With The Big Dog' evenings! So after the show is over you can come and hang out, have a couple of drinks, talk photography and even shoot some pictures with me! I look forward to seeing you there.

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There are 24 days to get ready for The Society of Photographers Convention and Trade Show at The Novotel London West, Hammersmith ...
which starts on Wednesday 15th January 2025