Portrait of a Surgeon
I MESSED UP
Written on the 28th of August, 2022
After my last cinematic headshots with my friend Ali AlKhayat, we decided to shoot a portrait picture of him for his job as a surgeon. He wanted to use it as a profile image on his social media platforms.
I chose to use a white background with a two-light setup. I placed my lights on both sides of my model, attached to a softbox and an octabox. Because I was looking at my LCD during shooting, I did not realize early on that the contrast ratio was almost 1:1, giving my subject a flat look. It is not the worse look, but a higher contrast ratio can create more depth and dimension to the image.
I made a mistake by using a wide aperture of f/1.4, giving me a shallow depth of field, which led my subject to have a blurry nose and back, which increased the flatness of the image. Furthermore, because of the wide aperture, I had an issue with his name on the scrubs having chromatic aberration.
I made another mistake by using a 50mm lens for a close-up shot, giving my subject a distortion. I was able to correct some of it in Adobe Lightroom, but I was not satisfied with the results.
Because I was obsessed with getting the background as white as possible, I made my third mistake. The subject's eyes got darkened by placing the lights far away to illuminate the background, and I lost the catchlight in the eyes.
If I decide to repeat the photoshoot, I will choose a telephoto lens of 85mm or more. I will also use a narrow aperture to eliminate the chromatic aberration and the unfocussed nose and back. Furthermore, I will get the lights closer to my subject and my subject closer to the background to enhance the catchlight of the eyes and create a higher contrast ratio.
The following were the best results of the images I got:
The Gear I Used
