I am trying and photograph a different style of portrait every ’work’ day with the help of my two kids in my small home office. Due to the Lockdown, I have the time, its whether they can stay still for five minutes!

Creating a pure white background is difficult in the tight space I am working in. So instead of using a white background paper that I would normally use with two umbrellas lighting it from either side, I used a large softbox as the backdrop and the key light.

I placed two large reflectors on both sides of the soft box making just enough space for my son Oisin to stand in and also enough space for the camera to see Oisin. So when the flash goes off, it bounces back off the reflectors onto Oisin’s face. So far, so good.

The image is very soft and you can see the reflective light on his cheeks. But his nose and mouth are a little dark. It works well but it wasn’t what I was looking for.

*Soft light from the back light surrounds Oisin*

So I put another softbox up on a boom arm and placed to camera right at a 45 degree angle.

I also took away the reflectors and placed a black reflector on camera left of Oisin.

I then upped the exposure so the backdrop was on half power and the foreground was on a quarter power.

My camera exposure is F5.6 @160@500iso.

On the histogram, the shots looked over exposed but I wanted the backdrop light to bleed through to the foreground so you get that white sheen down the side.

And this is the result.

So that is two very different looks created using the same background light but adding an additional key light. I tried using a harder light but the kids skin tones are so soft that I would need to try it out on an adult male to see the best results. Heres hoping I get a chance to do that soon!