Portraiture tutorial and collaboration.

Good day.

On Friday my girlfriend @yogidream.scapes and I were enjoying the summer breeze while watching the sunset through my bedroom window.

My bedroom has a westward facing window and receives quite a lot of sunlight during the magical golden hour. We used the amazing natural lighting to our advantage and quickly did a mini photo shoot.

I wanted to experiment with a dark silhouette paired with a half lit subject effect. To do this I had my girlfriend sit up on the window sill with the bright fiery glow of the sunset behind her. I was lucky enough to have the lighting illuminate her face while still providing a bright enough background to transform her body into a dark and mysteriously beautiful silhouette.

When working with large amounts of light like this while having to deal with some darker areas I like to opt for a larger aperture to capture as much of the natural light as possible. I would suggest investing in a 50mm prime lens with a maximum aperture of at least F:1.8. The reason for this is that your lens will allow a larger amount of light to be captured by the cameras sensors.

After adjusting the aperture to the desired setting I like to set my ISO to about 800 to prevent a grainy looking photo and a bit higher shutter speed to decrease any unwanted blur caused by shaking or movement. By now all the settings should be ready. Take a few test shots and adjust settings where necessary to achieve your desired effect. Personally I like darker photos as it ads some mysterious emotions to the image. Of course that is just my preference. Always remember that in photography or in any real situation the road to success is through trail and error, so unless you're wearing a horse shoe around your neck you won't be satisfied with your first attempt. Keep trying, you've got mad skill deep down inside😊😉.

We felt like there was some form of a tropical feel to the lighting. The equivalent of what you'd find in a tropical bungalow while listening to the waves breaking on the white sands of a quiet beach. Therefore the theme we were going for in this shoot was a bit tropical. The theme is always yours to decide and can add large amounts of emotion to your photos.

I chose to do most of the photos in a monochrome as well as the natural format as found under the "Photo Style" settings on my Canon 1300d. No post production was done on these photos as I felt they already possessed the necessary elements that I was looking for. With this said don't ever feel bad when it comes to photo editing. I do a lot of minor editing on the majority of my photos and I promise you that most professional photographers do the same. Technology is amazing, use it where you can.

I had a great amount of fun taking these photos, I hope that you can draw inspiration from these photos for your own projects in the near future. I hope you enjoy this collection as much as I do.

ISO:800 S: 1/640s F:1.8

ISO:800 S:1/800s F:1.8

ISO:800 S:1/640s F:1.8
Props are always a good edition to a photo. This was my old Canon EOS 350d.

ISO:800 S:1/2000s F:1.8
In this particular photo I wanted a darker, more mysterious feel and so I opted for a faster shutter speed of 1/2000s.

The next two images were taken while my girlfriend was sitting up against the wall, I wanted to capture a darker image in our last bit of remaining light.

ISO:400 S:1/3200s F:1.8

The monochrome setup was amazing but I still liked the deep red colour of the sunset and wanted to showcase it in the following two photos also taken while my girlfriend was sitting up against the wall

ISO:400 S:1/2000s F:1.8

It is always important to observe light when planning a photo as it holds great opportunities.

As I said in the title of this article, this is a collaboration between my girlfriend and I. She has a lot of skill when it comes to both modeling for and taking photos. She captured a few photos of me with the same theme in mind. You can take a look at her post by visiting her blog at @yogidream.scapes .
We plan on doing some more collaborations in the future.

A sample photo from her post.

I hope this article helps you with all your future photography projects. Feel free to leave a comment with your similar projects in the comment section below.

Have an amazing day.
Joshua Baxter.