I met with Jennifer on East 42nd Street for a street portrait session that went for well over an hour. My initial plan was to make use of city lights and experiment with long exposure techniques using a compact tripod and shutter release cable. I’m beginning to realize how much context long exposure adds to street portraits, and it’s likely that moving forward I will continue using that technique. This portrait session started right outside Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, NY, and from there, we continued our session toward Park Avenue, Lexington, and 3rd avenue.
With this shoot, I was determined to get sharp images, make good use of my low pixel camera to get well-exposed frames under challenging light. Except for the first set of frames, the rest of the photos in this shoot were taken with ISO 800, and that for me is the sweet spot before digital noise kicks on my older, full-frame camera. As this photo walk continued, I began using my speedlight, which I triggered with an infrared transmitter and held at arm's length. More than adding flash output, my main reason for using a flash was to prevent camera shake, so I purposely underexposed my flash power by three stops, and that allowed me to absorb as much ambient light as possible. That flash was warmed up with a 1/4 CTO gel and was extra diffused to soften shadows using a flash dome and a portable flag. High speed sync was also a technique that I used in some shots, allowing me to use shutter speeds that’s past my camera's limited range of 160/sec.
For the longest time, I wanted to dab into nighttime portraits, and I kept putting it on hold, attributing my lack of megapixels and older lenses as the main reason not to do it. I suppose those technical constraints in my workflow have been a blessing in disguise since they stimulate me to stop approaching photography from a mere technical vantage point. The truth is that it wasn’t until very recently that shooting portraits at night was very limiting, and now with modern cameras, night portraits are becoming sort of standard. Besides, these days when it comes to this kind of photoshoots, I’m only available specific nights, so right now, it’s either working at night or not do it at all, so, not feeding my creative craving is not an option.
I was thrilled to photograph Jennifer, her past work with other photographers stood out to me for her candid expressions. Jennifer is a NY based actress, and I couldn’t help being inspired by her choice of style for this shoot, which motivated us to try different backgrounds that for most people may seem ordinary; nonetheless, for this shoot, made the entire process a lot of fun. To follow Jennifer on Instagram, visit @jen_berge