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What is the worst light for standard portrait photography?

Over the past 25 years, most in New York City and Long Island, I was fortunate enough to have photographed over 3,000 weddings. My photographing (please do not say 'shooting a wedding; it distinguishes you from the amateur photographers), a wedding was 5 to 8 hours per affair and generally 3 to 4 weddings per weekend, 120 to 200 photographs per wedding.

The number of 120-200 photos may seem a very small amount, but remember, all this was on film, (medium format or size 120 film with 12 exposures per roll. Every shot counted and there were no more than 2 photographs for every pose, (hopefully no one blinked twice).

For those of you who remember 120 film, it did come in 24 exposures on a roll, but being fearful of either my losing a roll or the lab losing a roll, the worse a lost roll could hurt me was in 12 and not 24 photographs.

We only used 120 format cameras for 2 distinct reasons; first we needed the larger size negative to be able to enlarge almost everything to 8x10 or 16x20. 35mm, although I owned 3 rigs of equipment did not have the finer grain. I had to be prepared to blow up a "cropped Image" to 16x20. Many times the wedding couple loved their photo together surrounded by all the groomsmen and bride maids. Imagine the equivalent of enlarging a 35mm negative to a 40x60". The print quality would completely fall apart and the resulting print would be worthless. Brides do not like the phrase "it won't work". They only like "OK". And secondly, and this was just a small perk of using medium format cameras at a Wedding, it intimidated other family or friend photographers and they stayed out of my way. Please don't misunderstand, I never told a guest at a wedding not to take photographs, I just did not have the time to waste having someone else take over the photo session. I did all my groups and family groups and then when done, I turned them over to anyone else. By that time the Bride & Groom were either exhausted or starving, but I did what I was being paid to do and got all the pictures I needed.

But weddings from the late 1960's to mid 1980's only happened on a Saturday or Sunday. So, during the week days, I was available in the studio to have photographed every type of portrait imaginable. I hope to be able to provide the reader with my experience regarding the taking of portraits. In art, as in Photography there is no such thing as an absolute, i.e., no one can label themselves the "final authority" on portraits.

First off, this question assumes that there is such a thing as a 'standard portrait'.

There are many types of portraits and I list most of them below. What makes the lighting good in one scenario will make that same lighting setup totally unacceptable in another scenario.

In addition, most of the lighting is accomplished with one or more flash (strobe) lights on stands or held by assistants. I will also address using available light, with and without accompanying flash.

Let's look at some versions of the 'standard portrait':

  1. License, passport, ID cards and all other Identification photos
  2. Yearbook, resume, business card and trade magazine photos
  3. Wedding, couple at new years type party, photos out of a studio and on location 'done quickly'
  4. Portraits in studio or very controlled environments
  5. Portraits indoors or outdoors on location mixing available light and flash

Let's examine each item above:

#1 Identification photos require what is called "flat lighting". Most if not all of the light comes from in directly in front of the subject, or all from camera angle. This will result in a bland evenly lit photo without shadows. The subject's shoulders and face are turned completely to camera angle. This lighting will produce the best ID photo and rather crisp looking photographs. Three examples I can think of right away would be Passport, Drivers License, and Police Mug shots.

Almost everyone who has had one of these types of photographs taken will complain that they look "terrible", and flat lighting does exactly that. It's almost as if there is only 2 dimensions to the subject in these photos.

As in painting, the artist is faced with trying to turn a 2d object, either a canvas or a photograph, into something with depth, hence a 3rd dimension. In both mediums, it is done with the use of light to render shadows and higher tones of light. In black and white it is generally accepted that there are 7 or 9 (depending on the school of thought), visible values of black to white. In color, which should logically be the same sceaniro, I really believe we are restricted to only 6 true values.

So, getting back to the first kind of portraits, the joke I made to clients when they cringed at their Passport photos was, "If you really look like the picture, then you do need a vacation."

I'll be back for the rest of the types of portraits.

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