Everyone must have heard of the market-leading publication Motor Trader. If you’ve ever wanted to buy a second hand car or just being a car enthusiast, you’d definitely have come across it, heard about it, or even directed to take a look at it for all things car-related.
This corporate portrait photo assignment surprised me to know that Motor Trader is just one of many automotive classified publications by PROTO Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. formerly known as MTM Multimedia Sdn. Bhd. PROTO Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. is the number one automotive classifieds company in Malaysia for buying and selling cars, bikes and related products. I was present to photograph its IT Director, a 36 year old Mr. Wataru Kambe from Tokyo, Japan.
I was present along with another colleague who will be interviewing him at his office. During the interview, I will have to grab a couple of shots of him interacting. For this, I shot manual at ISO 200, and subdued my ambient at 1/160 sec and f/5. I had only one bare speedlight on a light stand fully extended aiming at the ceiling next to the table.
The shooting settings were made so as to maintain details outside the room; i.e. adjacent building. The ceiling was pretty low, or standard, should I say, typical of any office setup. Essentially, I was using the ceiling as a single large light source for soft light. Simple. No big fuss.
Right before the shoot in the room above, I’ve actually arrived much earlier to scout and setup. With one light already setup in the room for candid grabs, I went out and setup two more speedlights at the reception area, where the “Proto” logo is. This is for the typical corporate portrayal of this-face-to-this-company type of shots.
For this execution, things were a little more tricky. I increased my ISO to 320 and had my first bare speedlight pointed up at the ceiling to camera left. This light did two things. First, it provided my base ambient lighting, which was “killed” by my f/5 and 1/160 sec settings. This was accomplished by using the ceiling as my large bounced light source for soft light, raining down from above. Second, it also provided me much needed fill on Mr. Wataru’s right side of the face (camera left).
A second speedlight as my key on a reflected umbrella was to camera right aiming close on Mr. Wataru’s face. This was angled in such a manner so as to both kiss his face and scrape pass the rear wooden wall as my background light. Two birds downed with one stone. You can see the fall-off or feathered edge of this light at upper right corner which is a little dark.
Unfortunately, one can spot the reflection of these two lights at the rear glass pane (seen also more prominently at the shot immediately below), clearly seen above Mr. Wataru’s head and the Proto logo (FYI, the ceiling was really unusually low). One can choose to be really fussy about it and remove them in post but at the risk of being deemed just plain lazy, I was honestly fine with it. It wasn’t just not that obtrusive (ok, perhaps just for the shot below); in fact, it played really well to the situation, or atmosphere for that matter. They could have very well been banks of fluorescent lights! So be it.
Once I got the above shot in the bag, I had Rentwise‘s personnel moved in for a little group shot. I went wide. Same setup, same settings. Everything has been pinned down fine with Mr. Wataru’s individual shot, so there was definitely not going to be a problem with this group shot as long as I kept within the “sweet spot” of lighting, where all the magic happened.
No photo documentation of this business relationship would be complete without alluding to who Rentwise has been renting their laptops and computers. Everyone knows Motor Trader. So we moved to the other side of the room, a mere 8 feet away to photograph a happy customer with its supplier.
I was totally caught off guard on this as I had not tested the lighting for this scene. My sweet spot has been changed. I needed to readjust quickly and setup in the presence of my client. However since the space was pretty similar, I thought there shouldn’t be much change required.
Because it was a tight space and I needed to be in close, I dropped the ISO back to 200. The reflected umbrella was right over my left shoulder, almost pinned up against the wall. This lit the framed posters and provided fill for the subjects. My previous first bare speedlight pointed up at the ceiling was moved closer to subjects and acted now as my key light, on my camera right. This main light lit Mr. Wataru’s left side of the face as seen above.
Additionally, this key light also provided my ambient fill for the scene. You can clearly see I’ve switched the key and fill roles for both these speedlights in a jiffy. I’d be lying if I tell you I knew what I was doing then. I didn’t. My power settings on the speedlights? I can’t remember. I just didn’t know. I went with the flow. Most importantly, I knew the look I was going for and knew what to do. Establish your ambient fill (detail) and sculpt your subjects (shape). It’s just a juggle between this two, salt and pepper, and you’ll be in for a home run.
After these shots at the reception, I moved back into the room for a super simple shot of Mr. Wataru by the window. I was initially told there was going to be a great looking view of the KL cityscape. But what greeted me was a bland urban and concrete rooftops lined up with ventilation turbines. Not exactly passable.
But since I’m already setup, I chose a sliver of the buildings outside to be featured as my backdrop. Some dark clouds helped prevent an otherwise bland, featureless and blown-out sky. Not exactly spectacular, but well…
One corporate portrait was him looking pensive outwards, and the other, just being himself smiling.
Mr. Wataru Kambe was really nice and friendly. I can’t describe him any other way. As I was working with pretty large amount of light by the window, I was down to ISO 100, f/5.6 and 1/160 sec. A single bare speedlight was bounced into the ceiling just off to camera left.