Billie is a Commercial, Beauty, Fine Art and Fashion photographer and Creative Director located out of Toronto, Canada. Her style is unique and is often described as nothing less than "beautiful".
As someone that started with natural light and minimal gear, I have trained myself to produce quality images with less. Living in a commercial world it’s become incredibly important to have beautiful clean images with light that is soft on the skin.
For this shoot, we decided on a very “Dove” sort of feel. Simplicity with ultra clean light and glowing makeup. The day of the shoot I had the handy Profoto D1 onset and a whiteboard as well as a beautiful window. Anytime I’m aiming for a cleaner light, I always bounce artificial light off of walls or a whiteboard.
The key to success is to have a fair distance between your subject and the key light. Instead of having the light directed at the subject, you would have it directed at the wall and or whiteboard. In the case of these images, I directed the light at a whiteboard a good 6 feet away from the model. Essentially creating another larger, brighter window. Naturally, the window already created a fill in the studio. The point in adding to this was to give the existing light a bit of a kick.
I also had the whiteboard slightly right of the subject to create a very minimal shadow under the jaw. This helps give some definition to your subject. If you want to keep the images soft and beautiful, I would recommend shooting at an aperture no greater then 5.6 and an ISO 200-400. This gives you the ability to capture some of the existing light in the space you’re working with.
Here is what we were able to create:
Thanks Billie! To see more of Billie's work, you can visit her website or follow her on Instagram!
Facebook: @billiechiassonphotography
Twitter: @Billie_Chiasson