A recent law firm client wanted a corporate lifestyle portrait of one of their young lawyers. All the other portraits I did had been taken against a grey backdrop as requested by the client. The idea behind this particular portrait was to convey a message that this lawyer specialised in looking after successful start up companies and to give a less formal feel to the portrait. As usual I did not have much time and all my studio lighting equipment was already set up in the boardroom with the grey backdrop.
I knew there were several balcony outlook areas. Fortunately I found an area where the lighting was perfect on the background CBD office buildings and I felt that this setting would achieve the desired results. I could shoot this on a telephoto lens with a wide aperture so I could blur the background and focus on the subject. I used my speedlights on manual power with my Gary Fong Lightspheres on a stand. This was invaluable as the subjects face was in complete shadow. I was able to balance the foreground exposure with the background to achieve the desired result. One of the portraits was also to be used for a LinkedIn profile, like many of the other corporate portraits and headshots that I do.
