As part of an ongoing project to photo document and assist in directing the corporate blog of Rentwise, I’ve returned for another corporate shoot to photograph two newcomers who have joined Rentwise’s Sales Team. They have just renovated their office in Shah Alam, now spotting a really nice reception area on the ground floor with a really minimalistic approach in interior decoration; clean lines, spacious and sterile.
First to go was Nicole. A simple shot of her sitting on the couch taken at ISO 400, 1/160 sec @ f/4.5. A reflected umbrella with a double warming gel (1/2 + 1/4 CTO) as my key speedlight was moved in very close to her face, giving much needed warm. In fact, my base WB Kelvin temp was at about 3300K. You can see a tinge of blue at the upper right corner. This is not evident as the prevailing warmth washed this out.
For the next shot, I pulled a little wider, and added two more speedlights; one bare headed light zoomed at her hair and left shoulder (camera right) as my kicker and a third speedlight zoomed in on the wall as my background light. The vignette effect seen here is not added in post, but rather, the feathered edge of the background light.
Next, I got Nicole to sit on the couch, looking as if working on the laptop. The same warm reflected umbrella key speedlight was now angled at her face on camera right, while the second 105mm zoomed speedlight blasted a nearby wall to camera left and a third speedlight cut past her left shoulder (which also grazed the couch behind her). I was seated on the floor and shooting a little upwards at her.
As you can see from this pull-back BTS view, I was only using the feathered edge of the second 105mm zoomed speedlight to splash some definition and texture on the laptop. Otherwise, it would have been a big blob of black object that doesn’t hold the viewer’s attention. The halo effect on the background wall was made by carefully aiming the reflected umbrella’s central “sweet spot” so that it falls just right behind her head.
The warmth from this key light would have mixed into the blue ambient in the background and created a more neutral “hot spot” of “white” daylight halo. But this was overpowered by a manually dialed in “blue” ambient at 3300K (further cooled in post). Also, the fall-off distance of the wall behind gave dominance to this blue ambient, while the warm fades away. I supposed had I added a zoomed fourth 1/2 CTO speedlight directed at this halo spot, it would have been rendered neutral, but I’m liking this version better.
If there was ever one regret from this shoot of Nicole, it would be that I missed having had another speedlight bounced off her laptop screen for a lighting lift on her face. That would have been really cool. I thought about it but just didn’t get to doing it. Regrets…
Next up was Zen. I used the very same wall (mind you, it is originally grey!) and paint it blue by making a global adjustment at my white balance.
Unless you want your subjects looking like a corpse or an extra from Avatar, you would slap on warming gels (I doubled up a 1/2 and 1/4 CTO) to balance back the colours on the skin tone.
Finally, I had Zen seated on the couch staring at his diary to finish off the shots for today. This shot below had a zoomed speedlight aimed up at the wall beyond him, hidden by his body.
I initially walked in into a rather bare interior with very little furniture and grey walls. Typical of any corporate office space. But as long as I have those very two elements; furniture and wall, I’ll be glad to cut, slice, knead, smash and conjure up textures of my liking by using gels.
Not exactly the wall colour you desire? No problem. Adjust your white balance globally and balance through gels (unfortunately, you’d only get either blue or warm from this method) or paint the scene as desired; e.g. CTG, CTM, CTY, etc. The possibilities are endless.