subject: Mark Kumar - Studio Portrait Vs. Onlocation Portrait [print this page] I remember my first portrait shoot like it was yesterday. I setup my mobile portrait studio in my client's house. I popped open my background stand and put on my black backdrop on it. Then I placed my two studio strobes in front of it; about 6 to 8 feet away from my back drop.
After my shoot, I went home and downloaded the pictures into my computer. As I went through the first 10 or 15 photographs, I saw that my client looked great with all the different portrait poses. After I went through 40 or so photographs, I realized pictures had the same black backdrop. Which was ok, but I wish I had taken few different back drops with me. That way I could have had different back drops and whole look and feel of the photograph would have changed drastically. But it was too late!!!
Few weeks later, I was asked to do a portrait shoot outside. At first, I didn't know what to tell that person because I never shot portraits outside with natural light. I always thought portraits were suppose be taken inside; where I can control lighting and I get to pick what back drops I want. Outside, on the other hand, I get what I get. If it's a sunny one minute and cloudy next, I would have to figure out quickly how to adjust for the lighting in my camera. If that wasn't enough challenge, I had to figure out which location looked good for the portrait. On top of that, I ONLY had 25 minutes for whole portrait shoot. No pressure, right???
So, we got to the location and I found the perfect spot for the portrait. I started to shoot and as the luck would have it the sun was going in and out. One minute it was sunny and another minute it was cloudy. I quickly adjust the settings to have perfect exposure. As I was shooting and talking (to make my client relax) to my client, I would just move two feet to right and I would get completely different background. If I moved another two feet, I would get another completely different background.
I thought this was pretty cool because if I shoot onlocation all the time, I would never have to worry about running out of backdrops or having same B-O-R-N-I-N-G backgrounds for all of my portraits. With onlocation portrait, one of my portrait's could have beach as a background and another could have country setting to it. Or it could have city buildings, open road, cars, planes, and etc. My photographs will never have the same B-O-R-N-I-N-G black background!!! With onlocation portrait, sky is the limit.
That's when I decided that I to do onlocation portraits; where I would NEVER run out of backgrounds.
Here are some of my onlocation portraits:
Mark Kumar - Studio Portrait Vs. Onlocation Portrait
