20 Jan 2014 The Natural Portrait with Andrew S. Gibson (Podcast 405)

Andrew S. Gibson just released his latest Craft & Vision ebook, which is a “Big Book” some 240 pages long, all about making The Natural Portrait. At a time when so much of the information has us scrambling for our flashes, this book is a breath of fresh air, as it’s all about using natural available light.

In our conversation, Andrew gives us a brief run-down of what the book is about, and we then move on to a conversation about how working as a one-man-band while trying to set up lighting can hinder the communication necessary to build a rapport with your model.

Andrew also mentioned a great Digital Photo School post about the 100 Strangers Project.

We talked a bit about posing and finding light, as well as Andrew’s experiences working with models from Model Mahem.

In The Natural Portrait, Andrew shares some great tips for portrait retouching in Lightroom which led to a section of our conversation about how far you should go when retouching portraits, especially if you want to keep the resulting looking natural.

To finish Andrew gave us 5 tips for the photographer starting to shoot portraits like the ones in his new book. In brief they are:

1. You don’t need to buy lots of extra gear – an 85mm f/1.8 prime for a full-sized sensor camera or 50mm for a crop factor camera may be all you need
2. Get your model in the shade!
3. Shoot at the end of the day
4. Find a good background – i.e. scout good locations
5. Communicate with your model and build rapport

You can get your copy of The Natural Portrait from Andrew S. Gibson over at Craft & Vision.

Keep up with Andrew and his wealth of photography education related information www.andrewsgibson.com.

Here’s a sample photograph from The Natural Portrait too.

The Natural Portrait by Andrew S. Gibson

Show Notes

Andrew’s Web site: http://www.andrewsgibson.com

Music by UniqueTracks

Audio

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