Lighting and Posing Techniques for On-Location Senior Portraits (Part 1)

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Gear Used:
Rapid Box XL:
Westcott Top Pro photographer Matt Hernandez takes us behind the scenes of an on-location senior portrait photo shoot in this 2-part video tutorial series for photographers.

In this video, Matt discusses soft lighting while shooting outdoors on a sunny day. Soft lighting is an extremely flattering style to use when photographing women and girls. However, soft lighting is nearly impossible to achieve when shooting outdoors with only ambient lighting.

To create soft lighting on this sunny farm, Matt uses a strobe and the large 49″ Rapid Box XXL softbox with both diffusion panels. This softens and diffuses the output of the strobe, creating a very flattering, soft light source.

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21 Comments
  1. johan bauwens says

    Who ruined the pics in post ?

  2. chpmatt says

    It looks hot and humid there…..

  3. Epi King says

    The pics taken on ambient light look better and have more dimension than the ones taken with flash.

  4. PhotoZen says

    Ambient light pics are way better than your strobe pics, I guess it could be because you did not clip the shutter enough fearing your strobe will band if you go above 250 sync speed.

  5. Arthur Coon says

    I know this is an older video, but thanks, I learned from it!

  6. David Slocumb says

    Love your work, Matt. This was a 5 minute tutorial, but you spent 4 minutes talking. More shooting next time! Thx.

  7. Kristin Zolkowski says

    Cool tutorial although hillary looks angry 😉

  8. Marckymarc71 says

    If it was me I wouldn't have used a strobe here, but rather a diffusion panel to camera right. If you've got great directional late-afternoon sunlight, use it.

  9. Chad Hamilton says

    So many experts commenting, though I don't see any proof that any of you can do it better.

  10. Maggie Keefe says

    fluorescent green… yikes

  11. Remus Moise says

    The model looks nice, gentle but the photos are horrible.
    What a nasty over saturated skin and dress tone.
    Also the introduccion is so large to much bla bla bla……
    Sorry it´s not my type

  12. medicwanabe says

    Holy Retina those are over-saturated. I actually liked the ambient light better than those with fill.

  13. PendleHill Billies says

    Don't like, very unnatural over saturated colours, blown out, bad composition

  14. ke4uyp says

    Over saturated color in all the photos.

  15. OOrtiz87 says

    I'm guessing the model is friend, might just be me but I don't think it's professional for him to go up to her and say "all this nasty light on her face" etc, I think it would make the model feel a certain way, harsh light would have been better than nasty light.

  16. Drogos79 says

    holy over saturated

  17. Gabriel Pop says

    ambient light better pics…

  18. criminalmane says

    I thought the ambient light photos actually looked better in this one.  The highlights look a tad over blown in the background also.  Always a good video though!

  19. Keenan A says

    The hot spots in the backgrounds are so distracting.

  20. DearHasanNYC says

    Great Video.

    For Ambient Exposure: f2.8 1/250 sec @ ISO-100, Do you have ND filter on?

  21. Rex says

    Cool!

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