How can I make nice, professional looking corporate portraits?

Question

I have been asked to shoot a couple of portraits at work for a conference brochure. I am a keen amateur but never really shot corporate portraits.

I will use a Nikon D40 and the 50mm 1.4G.

I am planning on using natural light from a terraced roof we have. Would you have any tips to help me getting nice pro looking shots?

Answer 1

I would strongly suggest using indoor lights so you have complete control. Have the complete setup (with strobes and backdrop) done before they meet you. Do a trial run with your friends/model and tweak all the parameters till you get that perfect shot, so all the professionals have to do, when they meet you, is sit on a chair, look a certain direction and you just click the camera without thinking about anything(using the settings you had already set earlier).

Answer 2

The biggest thing that comes to mind based on what you've described is that you'll need supplemental lighting. If all you're working with is overhead light, you're going to have a lot of shadows in the eye sockets, under the nose, under the chin, etc. It'll work great for a monster movie, but not so much for a business portrait.

This lighting might come in the form of continuous lighting, strobes, or even by having an assistant or a light stand that's holding a reflector to reflect some of the overhead light back into the shadows.

Answer 3

This is a simple setup using a cheap 83cm umbrella and 40cm softbox with two $80 Yongnuo YN-560 manual speedlites triggered with RF-602 wireless triggers. I'd probably put this basic lighting gear at about $350-400 and it's served me very well.

This is by no means the only lighting setup you could use for a business portrait, but it produces decent results.

Getting some cheap lighting gear like this will really open up a lot of opportunities to sculpt your lighting the way you want.

The great thing about using strobes like this is that you're running pretty close to ISO 100 which will yield very sharp results.

You can of course use natural light and use it effectively but I guess it's up to the needs of the design as to what sort of look you need to capture.