
The other day I took a passport-type portrait of my brother for
Amex. He needed it for a national travel agents card or something like that that will get him some killer deals on hotels, travel, and other things like that. I think it turned out pretty well. He printed them out on his home printer and it looked pretty darn good, if I say so myself. My nephew pointed out that it looks good except for the shadow on the right side of the picture. Shadow? Sure there is, but that makes the picture look more dimensional and not flat like a lot of pictures you could take with the flash pointed straight at the subject.

Anyway, if he wanted a shadow, I'll give him a shadow! I look this one the other night and purposely put the light source at a 90 degree angle to light up one side of his face. There. Now there is his shadow. I had to darken up the background a little bit during post processing--that's just what you have to do when you don't have a studio I guess. Usually, if you light up a light colored like I did in the top picture, it can get pretty white. Although I still had to lighten it up in post a tad again. If lighting interests you, check out
the strobist site--it's one of my favorites and have learned a lot from it.