Chuck Espinoza Photography

The other day I had the pleasure of photographing five attorneys at their office in Century City. The words “conference room” had me thinking of a large space with plenty of room for lights and stands. I was mistaken. This was another situation where I had to make it work with what I was given.

Lighting set up in conference room

Why so much gear for a simple executive portrait?
My first concern was that the first two scheduled attorneys wore glasses and I had to make sure I couldn’t see my lights reflected in their glasses.  This is the set-up I ended up with; I changed it slightly for the other three attorneys.

The Norman soft box is my main light and the grid helps me keep the light off the backdrop.
The SB26 next to the paper adds a little light to the back of the subjects head.
The shadows were too dark camera right so I added the Quantum in a small softbox outside the room firing through the window.
I wanted a little more fill coming from the direction of the camera so I shot another small strobe towards the white bounce taped to the wall.

It took me about an hour to unload, set-up and test the lights. It took 22 minutes to make all five executive portraits.