Location Portrait Photography with Speedlights – Brick Wall

With today’s portable wireless flash systems, there’s no need to limit yourself to photographing portraits in a studio. The world is now your studio!

For this particular photo assignment, I was commissioned to photograph a head shot portrait of my client for his website and portfolio. The shot looks as though it was taken in a studio, however, this photo was actually captured on location in Downtown Riverside, California, where I take the majority of my portraits; out and around Downtown Riverside as the city provides some diverse backdrops. However, you don’t particularly need a big city to work to take location portraits. Residential neighborhoods and rural areas can provide for some interesting and unique location photography. You are only limited by your imagination and creativity.

For this lighting lesson, I used to Nikon SB800′s on location. Take a look a the portrait, this could have been taken in a studio, but it wasn’t. I captured this on a side street in downtown Riverside which had a brick wall back drop, in a shaded area. I sat my subject on a wooden stool a few feet away from the wall. I set up my two lights and fired away. To learn more about this set-up, view the lighting diagram below along with the set-up explanations. If you actually try this type of portrait set-up, I would certainly like to see some of your shots. Feel free to share them by contacting me.

Lighting diagram for this portrait

1. Locate a nice and clean background. In this example, I’m using the brick wall to a building in a downtown urban area.
2. I had my subject posed and sitting on a wooden stool with his guitar resting on his right leg and right arm strategically resting on top of the musical instrument. Subject is sitting approx. 3 to 4 feet from the wall.
3. A Nikon SB800 Speedlight fitted with the TN-A1 gel (tungsten balanced gel, included with the SB800) was added for the “orange glow” back light. The Sb800 was hand held by an assistant. You can mount the SB800 to a stand, but I chose to have it hand held so the lighting positing could be easily and quickly adjusted.
4. Another Nikon SB800 positioned about 4 feet from the subject at a 45º angle to the subject and mounted to a Cowboy Studio Large Speedlite Softbox (See product recommendation below for this product.) this provided the main light which was soft in nature.
5. My Nikon D300 mounted with a Nikkor 50mm/AFD 1.4 was hand held. Settings: ISO: 250,  1/400 sec @ f/4 in commander mode with the Back light set in Group B and the Main light in Group A.

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10 Responses to “Location Portrait Photography with Speedlights – Brick Wall”

1. Meryl Jenks says:

   February 16, 2011 at 9:49 pm

   Love the info and blog. I have all of my graphic design art setup on a flash portfolio online now. I would love to see more galleries and portfolios of people.

   Reply
   • Alyn says:

     February 16, 2011 at 10:48 pm

     I agree, seeing others’ portfolios can inspire a designer or even a photographer for their own work and portfolio.

     Reply
2. Hugh Dutton says:

   February 17, 2011 at 3:09 pm

   Hey, great post on the Speedlights, really well written. You should post more about this.

   Reply
3. Andrew A. Porter says:

   March 3, 2011 at 1:47 pm

   I love my Nikon D7000, do you ever post details on them or other similar cameras?

   Reply
   • Alyn says:

     March 3, 2011 at 2:18 pm

     Thanks for the comment Andrew. I really don’t get into camera reviews on the site. I mainly focus on lighting and shooting set-up tips. But, you never know. I may throw in a review or discussion on cameras now and again.

     Reply
4. Ryan Kincaid says:

   March 8, 2011 at 3:43 pm

   Thanks for all the info, your photography blog is extremely helpful. Your photo looks like a studio shot. Very impressive that you accomplished this outdoors!

   Reply
5. Liz Golden says:

   March 10, 2011 at 8:29 am

   This is the most informative blog on lighting that I have ever come across I will definitely like to read even more posts on this subject and I would suggest my friends to bookmark it.

   Reply
6. HDShootsPhotos says:

   March 30, 2011 at 2:03 pm

   Great website. I am a novice with using flash and your diagrams and explanations definitely breaks it down for me. Your work on this website is much appreciated!

   Reply
7. Uri says:

   February 29, 2012 at 11:10 am

   What power were the flashes set at? How far were they from the subject? How far were you from the subject?
   Thanks for the great article/idea!

   Reply
   • Alyn says:

     February 29, 2012 at 1:54 pm

     Hi Uri. Good questions. For the Key light (main light) strobe with the soft box, I set the light about 4 feet from the subject. My goal was to get it as close as possible so that I got a nice, soft light on my subject. This flash was set to full power.

     For my back light, I had it angled at 45º. That flash was set at 1/2 power.

     The only thing I would do different would be to flag the background light and block the spill back that you see on the backside, edge of my subjects right arm. It’s the rim light you see on the backside of the arm sleeve of his jacket. It’s not wrong, but just my personal preference.

     Hope this answered your question.
     Alyn

     Reply