My friend Bedis Chaouachi, talented photographer and owner of Digital Iris, is also a Canon trainer. For his last Canon Video Pro Workshop in Morocco, he needed a headshot of himself, since the one he used to provide is outdated. So he called me asking if I was "ready to make a portrait of the worst model ever" : himself !
Even If you already did this many times, I always find it challenging to do it for a professional like you, specially when himself did this hundreds of times (always behind the camera). So I went for a simple setup, soft diffused light for nice midtones : a 2 lights setup with 2 reflectors.
A key light on a stand, at about 2 meters high, angled down at 45°, with an octobox and about 1,5 meters away from the photographer, I mean the subject, the subject photographer, you get it,... and a kicker light, about 2 meters away, on the right side of the model.
Since the main source is from the side and facing down, I wanted to soften the shadows by putting a large reflector on the opposite side and a small circular one, silver side facing Bedis.
We took a couple of shots and then we tweaked the hair light and the reflectors, to have a nice bouncing on the side of the face and open up a little bit the shadows under the chin, but still keeping some contrast and a nice gradient falling on the t-shirt and vest. And here's the final shot, after some editing made by Bedis himself.
It seems that this portrait brought him luck, since the team he was training won the contest during the workshop, more infos to come on the Canon Central and North Africa . ( the portrait has nothing to do with it, its only the work of the trainer and all the trainees of course ! )
If you're wondering what is the brand of the nice vest Bedis is wearing, it is actually called a Dengry or Dengri, and this one is made by our friends's brand called LYOUM , here's their website.