A Portrait Shoot With Model Mark Davies At Neath Abbey Ruins

Sometimes an event can happen by planning in advance, and sometimes it can just happen because of fate. I was going to pop out with my friend Andrew to practise some flash techniques, but at the last moment I decided to just place a message on Facebook if any models would like to help us out, then please contact me. Thankfully, a wonderful local male model named Mark Marcello Davies answered that call, and we had a few hours of wonderful portrait photography.

The portrait shoot was all about learning to use the light, carrying on from the successful photoshoot we had with our model Ffion last week. Armed with my Nikon Z6ii, my Godox flash, Andrews Godox AD200 light and a variety of other flashes, we ventured into the local Neath Abbey Ruins which we have visited for general photography in the past. Before our model arrived, Andrew and myself checked out a few areas, and we had a plan of what we wanted with the model.

Sadly, we had problems with Andrew’s camera syncing with the flashes for some reason, so we ended up with Andrew moving the lights around and helping me with the model, and myself taking the images. All was not lost though, as I think it all worked out very well!

I edited the photos in Photoshop. I did not use any gimmicks, no changed backgrounds, no removing objects, no glow effects and simply relied on the lighting and lens settings that we used on the day. My go-to combination now for lenses for portraits is the Viltrox 85mm F/1.8 and the Nikon Z40mm F/2, both shot generally always wide open. I colour graded using the Nikon Standard colour palette to match the jpegs that I also took, but of course used the raw files for far more flexibility with the fine-tuning.

I hope you like the results. First here are the colour edits.

I also thought it would be nice to do some black and white edits, and so here are the results.

Once again, for the second time going out with the camera, within a short time, I learned a heck of a lot. This time through trial and error, trying different lighting arrangements, usin one and often two off-camera flashes/strobes. I am extremely pleased with the images, and I look forward to more photoshoots with Mark.

If you like what you see, please, like, comment and subscribe! And until next time, thank you very much.