On Location: One Person One Light Dramatic Portraits

In this video, photographer Jay P. Morgan (from the Slanted Lens) takes us behind the scences of a relatively simple but challenging photo shoot with one subject, one light and one photographer.

Morgan went out to the Maine heading out on Stonington to photograph fishermen. Often these type of on location shooting force you to be creative especially when not taking a lot of gear and shooting on your own. In this case Morgan used just one Photoflex Triton on a stand with an Octodome that has a grid on it. The reason he choose this was keeping size and weight down and it is easy to move around.

In terms of camera and lens Morgan used the Canon 5D Mark III with a Tamron 24-70mm 2.8 lens is my primary camera/lens (mainly to get more of the environment) and a second camera with a Tamron 70-200mm 2.8 lens for close ups.

As for settings – this type of photography will typically be best suited for shooting in manual mode (balancing storobes with daylight is hard any other way). Morgan used the open daylight to fill the fisherman’s face, then he added the Triton and dial it up or down until he got a nice highlight on his face.

If you are looking for a more basic tutorial on one light check out “Tony Corbell on One Light Studio Portraits“.

You can find all of Jay P. Morgan’s videos here on LensVid on the following link.

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.