PHOTOGRAPHIC GuIdlInes fOR PORTRAITS

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CLOTHES

Recommend the model ideally to wear dark clothes without pat-terns. Light clothes often work poorly, as they do not show up well against the light background, see below.

LIGHTING

Incandescent and fluorescent lights are not to be recommended as it may be difficult to achieve good skin tones using these light sour-ces. Try to use daylight and/or flashlight. The front lighting should be a softbox, and/or a large window area with natural daylight. All surrounding artificial light sources should be removed.

BACKGROUND

The background should be white to very light grey, preferably not completely washed out. The edges should be somewhat darker to ensure they are visible if the image is published against a totally white background such as Saab’s website. The person’s background can either be a white wall, backdrop, or a backlighting situation. The example image uses backlighting where the edges are made slightly darker in the post-processing.

DEPTH OF FIELD

Aim to achieve the shortest possible depth of field to isolate the subject matter and reduce the details in the background. The

recommended focal distance is 85 mm for full format miniatures, or 50 mm for smaller sensors, and diaphragms between 1.2 and 1.8. Ensure there is a long distance to the background, and get as near as possible to the person being photographed so that the picture might only need a tiny amount of cropping afterwards: this assures that the field of depth is kept minimal.

POST PROCESSING

There are examples in this material that can also serve as a guide when you process the images, so they come as near to the example as possible. A good option is to use raw format when photograp-hing and then make adjustments in a raw format converter so that you can get the image as close to the example as possible after-wards.

DELIVERY

Along with high resolution files, Saab also needs to have deliveries of the portraits in three different sizes for web publication:

Small: 72 x 77 pixels, portrait, black and white. Medium: 110 x 117 pixels, portrait, black and white. Large: 212 x 266 pixels, portrait, colour.

The colour space should be Adobe RGB for high-resolution images, and sRGB for the three web sizes regardless of whether the images are delivered as black and white or in colour.

PORTRAIT GuIdlInes fOR PHOTOGRAPHERS

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guidelineS

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photogrAphY editing

POST-PROCESSING, EXAMPLE

• Adjusted closely spaced colours so they come closer to each other – the hair colours are made closer to the skin tones, and the colours in the background are reduced.

• the contrast is increased to ensure the light from the softbox is emphasised and the background reduced.

• the neck is made a little lighter and the skin tones are evened out somewhat.

• if the clothes are not dark, they can be made to look darker afterwards to create a more silhouette like impression.

unedited original image

edited versions in colour and black and white

Softbox on stand

PHOTOGRAPHY, UNEDITED EXAMPLE

• Backlighting in the form of window light behind the model. A white wall or background can also be used.

• face light from an additional window, and a softbox that adds a little extra shape to the face. there should not be any light from above but only from the front.

• Controlled contrast during the photo shoot, and then increase the contrast later when editing, and thereby the colour saturation.

unedited original image

raw format program: lightroom

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Small

Medium

large

deliverY > high reSolution deliverY > WeB

DELIVERIES FOR WEB

• Small: 72 x 77 pixels, portrait, black and white.

• Medium: 110 x 117 pixels, portrait, black and white.

• large: 212 x 266 pixels, portrait, colour.

• All of these images are delivered in srgB, 72 dpi, tif or Jpg quality 11.

• the portrait is cropped closer to make it visible in a small size and so that the background has a more even shade of light grey. the background should appear like this in the web delivery.

HIGH RESOLUTION DELIVERY

• high resolution images are delivered in Adobe rgB, 300 dpi, portrait a4, 21 x 30 cm.

• file format tif or Jpg quality 11.

• Where possible, deliver directly into the Cumulus data-base: contact your purchaser at Saab for details.

• note that the background does not need to have the same dark frame structure around the edges as this example image has.

Close-up of Saab’s web

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080718-142-ed-fr 080718-152-ed-fr 080718-155-ed-fr

080718-158-ed-fr 080718-165-ed-fr 080718-172-ed-fr

080718-179-ed-fr 080718-183-ed-fr 080718-189-ed-fr

080718-330-ed-fr 080718-332-ed-fr 080718-338-ed-fr

080718-348-ed-fr 080718-366-ed-fr 080718-368-ed-fr

080718-376-ed-fr 080718-391-ed-fr 080718-394-ed-fr

poSing lighting

LIGHTING ALTERNATIVES

• in addition to window light and normal softboxes, alternative light sources can be used: the important thing is that the results match the style displayed in this guide.

• if camera mounted flashes are used do what you can to soften the light, e.g. with small camera mounted diffusers.

• large clusters of light banks can also be used, and often provide suit-able light with low contrast which can be increased later when editing.

EXAMPLE IMAGES, WITHOUT EDITING

• vary facial expressions to include both serious and happy poses.

• vary posture and use different head movements.

Simple: dual camera mounted diffusers on compact flashes

More ambitious: a cluster of six flashes each with a softbox