THE APPRENTICE SHOOT WITH A PRO
This month portrait pro Russ Tierney shows our Apprentice Jonathan six simple lighting setups at his Splash Point Studio in Wales
APPRENTICE
NAME:
JONATHAN PEARSON
CAMERA:
CANON EOS R5
JONATHAN, 54, is a self-employed pest controller from Chester who loves to take portraits. He’s been using a camera since he was 17, first practising on his friends when he was still in school. Nowadays, he devotes his spare time to arranging photoshoots with models, and loves to experiment with indoor and outdoor setups. In addition to his latest Canon EOS R5 he also shoots on several film cameras too as he sometimes prefers the look. See his lovely work on Purpleport.com under the username jukeboxjohnnie.
CANON PRO
NAME:
RUSS TIERNEY
CAMERA:
CANON EOS R5
SHOOTING for more than a decade as a professional portrait photographer, Russ works in his cool Splash Point Photo Studio in Rhyl, North Wales. He’s won and is regularly commended on photo competition sites like Viewbug, PhotoCrowd and Gurushots, which has led to his work being displayed and exhibited all around the world. We met up with him at his indoor studio, complete with an infinity curve, neon wall and a swimming pool to help PhotoPlus Apprentice Jonathan raise his portraiture. www.splashpointphoto.co.uk
TECHNIQUE ASSESSMENT
In Manual mode, Apprentice Jonathan has complete control of the exposure
TO BEGIN, Russ asked Jonathan to start with his Canon EOS R5 set to its Manual mode to take full control of the exposure. He suggested starting with ISO100 for best image quality as the lights can be made more or less powerful instead of changing the ISO. The aperture was set to f/9 to provide a large depth of field to ensure all of model Natalia’s body was in sharp focus. Shutter speed was set to 1/125 sec, which was below the maximum sync speed so that it wouldn’t cause any issues with flash sync.
RUSS SETS a manual white balance setting on his Canon EOS R5 to make sure the colours look perfect. Shooting in RAW also gives you the ability to change the temperature and tint of images back in Photoshop too. As Russ and Jonathan were switching between flash, constant LEDs and neon lighting the auto white balance may not always get it 100% correct, so Russ suggested Jonathan set a manual white balance of 5500K for the first setup using flash and check it throughout the day as the lighting changed.
HOT SHOT #1
RUSS’S COMMENT
“Our first model of the day, Natalia (@natalia.ifbb) met me and Jonathan in the studio in the morning. She’s a bikini fitness model and overall women’s winner of the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation earlier this year. I wanted to start Jonathan off with a simple low ke
