Over the course of my portrait photography class I took last semester, I got the wonderful opportunity to work with the photo department’s profoto flashes. These particular flashes produce wonderful quality lighting, especially in portraits. Working in the studio is probably my favorite place to produce images and where I feel I shine the most as a photographer. My most recent photo shoot with these flashes produced some of my favorite studio images to date, featuring a variety of outfits, moods, and of course poses.

Throughout the course of this class I worked on communicating more with the models I worked with, giving clear directions and creating more dynamic photos. Having your subject pose to create certain shapes or create leading lines can add additional interest to photos. Triangles specifically are often referred to as a photographer’s favorite shape and add more dimension to a portrait. For this particular shoot, we were focusing on the theme of dance, which provided the opportunity to utilize jumps and arabesque poses, with stop motion action shots. I was excited to be capturing such dynamic and energized photos, a nice change of pace from very still sitting portraits.

After finishing up with the jumps and turns and other various dance moves, I wanted to find some other way of adding depth and interest to the photos. Our professor had set the lights up on either side of our subject, creating very uniform lighting. I however love shadow and wanted to add more depth and dimension to my more simply posed photos, and going down to just one flash on the main side was the best way to do so. The single light photos were my favorites of the entire shoot and compare far better than those with both lights. These lights have become by far my favorite form of lighting and I use them every chance I get!