Portraiture Photography | William Bulteel

My flatmate will recently decided that he was going to give up on acting. So in the midst of a random conversation he asked me to produce some headshots for acting portfolio. I saw this as a challenge as I no longor had access to a studio so I drew up a couple of plans. I decided to go for the plan to buy an A2 [420 x 594 mm or alternatively 16.5 x 23.4 inches] white piece of card and sellotape it to the inside of the bathroom door.

The A2 white paper was used to create a smooth hi key [bright] background. There were two reasons for this decision. The first was so that the background would be smooth and totally free from distraction and the second reason was that having a lo key [dark] background would not have suited as he has dark hair and it would have blended too much with the background.

I made the decision to do the photographs in the bathroom, because it is the only room in the house with no source of natural light. This meant that I could control all of the light in the room. Giving me the ability to produce the shots I wanted without the chance of failure. The only lighting that I used was my Canon Speedlite 430EX and I bounced the light of of the ceiling to get the lighting I desired.

After I had taken the shot I resized the image to fit the 10×8″ ratio so that when he got them printed for his portfolio they would print perfectly. In this post I have included six photographs. All taken in my house in Bangor with a Canon EOS 50D using a Canon Speedlite 430EX and my Sigma 18-50mm f2.8 lens. Also, all the images are monochrome.