Neil Creek – Photographer

I finally feel like I'm starting to get the hang of understated portrait flash lighting. The natural tendancy to start with was to go to town and have fun with funky effect lighting, as is obvious from many of my earlier posts. Now that I've got that out of my system (*grin*) I'm happy to make the lighting 'invisible', so that the point of the photo is the subject.

I'm particularly pleased with the photo of Grug above. I set up the flashes in the positions and set to the relative strengths I thought would produce a pleasing portrait, and what you see is my very first test shot. I think I pretty much nailed it! The side light is perhaps a smidge too bright, and perhaps a reflector below might have helped with the shadows under the eyes and nose, but I think it's a great photo as-is.

From top to bottom:

• Our niece, Emma
• My mum with Emma
• Mum and I (taken by Nomi)
• Grug
• Naomi