BETTER PHOTOGRAPHY FOR PORTRAIT PAINTING. By Ben Lustenhouwer.

In this video I'll show you how I do the photography with the model. How I take the pictures with the sitter. I show you my professional stuff that I have in my studio but also cheap stuff that everybody has at home. A cheap light, the cell phone, nothing special. I'll show you what I do in Photoshop to make better images and also I show you how to make good copies to paint from. Here we go. I think it's very important to do your own photography. Make your own pictures. It's easy to find on internet beautiful pictures to paint from like from George Clooney or David Bowie or the beautiful Dutch Queen but it's not your picture. Do your own photography that shows how you want to show the sitter. Pay attention to good photography. If this is the timeline for making a portrait, one third is in preparation in general. One third is photography and making the copies. One third is only the painting. So one third is into photography. Really pay enough attention to good photography. Lousy photography make bad paintings. It's so much easier if you have a nice picture to paint from the portrait will go more and more easy. What you need for a cheap stuff to make good pictures is a lamp, transparent paper, a piece of transparent paper, a cloth hanger, a small clip, a piece of styrofoam or just a piece of white paper and a cell phone. I'll show you the lamps that I use for my professional stuff but you can also do with very cheap stuff that you will have all at home. This lamp, I think we all have these kind of old lamps and a piece of transparent paper to filter the light. Put it here, hopefully it doesn't fall off. There we are. For the secondary light source I use this piece of styrofoam. It came with a mirror that I sometimes paint myself portrait. It's lightweight, beautiful, beautiful tool to make some reflecting light. Right I switch off my studio light. Now you see what it looks if I have only one light source. I take carefully my cell phone and I make pictures with the earphones of my iPhone. I don't know if you knew that. When I put the reflector far away there is a dark shadow in my face. Coming nearer and nearer you see it's getting lighter. If this part of my face is far too light, I move a little bit further away from the light source. So here we go with the bouncing light, the reflector and now I look in the camera, relax, smile and I make some pictures. More than one, two and let's see the result. I think this picture is not really bad. You see with cheap stuff and a cell phone you can make nice pictures that you can paint from. If you don't have Photoshop you can also do with the application Snapseed. Open a picture in Snapseed and go to tools. There are all kinds of settings. For instance the exposure. Hundreds of settings in this fantastic tool. First I hang in my studio a piece of textile as a neutral background in the color that suits the model and I stick a piece of white paper for checking the white balance later in Photoshop. Sometimes I go to the sitter's home and I see what light I can find in the rooms. Here this is my studio lighting. I have two of these video torches and I use them also for making the pictures of the sitter. I use usually two. The main source, that's this one and I have another one over there to give some information on the shadow side. I'll show you how it looks from here. That's my secondary light and this is my main source. You don't need so much light. I mean now I have switched on my studio lights so I will switch off them. That's also an important thing. Don't use too many light sources. One main source and a secondary one and maybe the secondary one is too much. Let me see if I can do it less like that. You also see my piece of paper that I use for checking the white balance later in Photoshop. I can do it also with the camera but I prefer to do it in Photoshop. You see I have two really strong lights. Imagine this would be a picture and I'm the model. I'm sitting here. This is very strong light. So what I do, I have a piece of transparent paper here on a standard. You see now there is a soft spread of light. If I switch off that one you see there is a really strong strong shadow and I advise not to do that. If you're a starter really really strong shadows, although it's not really the worst, but strong strong black shadows are sometimes difficult. Look now there is more information. If you have a sitter who is not, and that happens often, not really familiar with sitting. Imagine you come at the sitter's home and the person doesn't, it's not a good shape. You're sitting there for you and you think well this is not going anywhere. Never say well I'll come back tomorrow because today is not really your good day. Then the sitter thinks oh my goodness this is really bad. But tell him a sweet lie. You say like this and then you say yeah yeah yeah that's it and then he brightens up. That's an important thing to talk with your model. If you have a very fat person don't do it like this because that's all the volume that you don't want to see. Well I have my volume here as well but that's something that you don't want to see. Make him turn around like that. Always a good help. Sometimes I ask my sitter do you really need your glasses? So when you take them off and you give them something in his hand like this or whatever. Not like this. People think well I'm sort of relaxed now. It's awful. Be aware of these little things. Another important thing is do you want to show a smile? I did it in most of my portraits but sometimes people don't want it. So instead of being this. If you ask people to sit and look normal, this is what people think they look normal. If you ask them to laugh, you show teeth, could be too much. Ask the sitter to think of something nice. That's really the three things that you can think of. Also you can turn the sitter looking like this or the other way around. Try to find all these subtle changes in position. What is what I wanted to tell you more? Oh yeah, think of if you have a commission of two persons. For instance father, mother. Think of one person sitting like this and the other person sitting like that. Then you have a nice match of two gestures into the center of the attention. What I want to tell you is avoid standing too close to your model. I'll show you with my cell phone what happens. I make a selfie. This distance is let's say 40 centimeters and I'll take a selfie. I smile. You'll see it is a bad picture. Big nose, small ears. It's awful. So be aware that you're at least one and a half meter or two meters. Later you can zoom in to cut out only the face if you need the face. This is how it looks when I work with a model. Not a professional one but a beautiful lady. Blonde hair, nice dress and I ask her to sit where to look. Change arms. Another model. I ask him to look into the camera. And I think this is a beautiful portrait. I opened the image in Photoshop. First I took a selection and I decided what picture I want to do. And this is what it looks when you open your picture in RAW. That's the opening when you have the possibility to make your pictures in RAW. All kinds of settings. I can change the exposure but I think it's more or less okay. But the most important thing is that I want to show you is to change the temperature. I go to this stripper. I click on this piece of white paper. And now you see the white is balanced. It's not too reddish, it's not too yellowish. So I say okay. I open the image and now I crop the image. And with this one I can go to the copy shop to make some good copies. I made two color copies. A lighter one and a slightly darker one. They're both okay but I think this one is a little bit better. So good quality color prints. If you take a lousy copier, a copy machine, you look, this is awful. And some people really think they can paint a portrait of that. It's completely burned, the shadows are too red. So don't do that. Make a black and white copy that's cheaper for the face, the size. I usually make the face slightly smaller than life-size. I use the glossy picture for the color and the black and white for the size. I'm ending this video now. Don't think that you really must make pictures with artificial light. You can also do with daylight at home. Use the reflector when needed. And you see beautiful pictures can be done with daylight of course. Also think of there is no need to look into the camera. This is also a nice picture. But what you really must avoid is taking pictures outside. The model closes the eyes and there is no way to get a nice open eyed picture. I really hope you enjoyed this video. Please don't forget to like it. In the future you will see more of everything I know about portrait painting. So see you later.