Marquita as the model during her commercial photography lesson in her own photography studio!I met Marquita for a second 1-on-1 commercial photography lesson yesterday, this time at her photography studio in the artisitc Grand Central district of St. Petersburg. She had been practicing since we first met a few weeks ago in Curtis Hixon Park and was having some white balance issues shooting on a white background using her studio light setup. Even though she was shooting in RAW using auto white balance, the images coming out of the camera were looking warm, and thus skin tones did not look natural, etc. To solve this problem I showed her how to set a custom white balance on her Canon T2i which was thankfully not too difficult to figure out just by looking in the menus. Sure enough, once she used the new custom white balance, her photographs came out looking true to color straight from the camera, not post-processing white balance adjustments needed.
She also wanted her white background to look more white, such that it was invisible. I put one of her studio lights directly on the background to essentially blow it out, and that combined with the custom white balance made the subject appear to be on a pure white background, again no post-processing editing needed to fix.
We concluded the lesson by seeing what just one speedlight off camera with a reflector can do (see the above portrait of Marquita). Marquita will be investing in a better speedlight for her event photography work, which she can also use in her studio too.
For the next lesson we will tackle Photoshop and how to add any color background to a subject shot on her white studio background!
For party planning services, visit Marquita's website.
