A Portrait Photoshoot in Barcelona: Martin, Irma and Brutus

It’s sod’s law, I guess.

Get a new camera and suddenly every job gets cancelled or postponed.

It was two weeks before I finally got a chance to use it properly. When I first got the message from Irma, I wasn’t expecting much to come of it, but a few days later they confirmed the date. The shoot was the following day, and listo, we had a shoot.

Starting with Some Rooftop Headshots

I arrived at their place in Barcelona and started with some professional headshots for Martin, which he needed for work, LinkedIn and the usual things.

We were up on the roof, with some decent views across Barcelona. I was using a large softbox, which can be particularly useful when it’s very sunny. It provides flattering light, of course, but can also double up as shade for the subject.

New Camera, New Flash Controller, New Problems

So, the new camera…

Well, I hadn’t quite finished setting it up to behave like my old one, and it was proving a tad annoying. The image previews weren’t appearing after each shot, something I find particularly useful when working with flash.

To add to the complications, I was also using a new Godox flash controller. Its touchscreen kept getting activated by my forehead.

There is a solution for this, which involves scrolling through the menus to find a lock button, but when you’re actually shooting, that’s a pain in the arse!

Anyway, enough complaining.

Taking the Portrait Session to a Barcelona Park

After Martin’s headshots, we collected Irma and their dog Brutus and headed to a nearby park to continue the portrait session.

We first tried something against a large blue mosaic wall. This meant shooting directly into the sun. Combine that with me repeatedly headbutting the flash controller into random settings and an extremely enthusiastic dog, and I wasn’t entirely sure I was getting anything I liked.

To make things a little more challenging, Irma was heavily pregnant, and even sitting down was hard work.

We tried the other side of the park, this time in the shade. Much better. And no more sitting for this shoot.

Then we moved over to some trees, which provided more shade. Great.

A Good Wall and a Patient Client

After that, we started heading back.

As we were walking, I spotted a wall. Irma must have noticed something resembling longing in my eyes because she asked if I wanted to stop and shoot again.

I love patient clients.

The wall was good, we were in the shade, and I could actually see what I was doing. All good.

Sometimes the Best Photos Are the Unexpected Ones

The funny thing is that one of my favourite photographs from the session turned out to be one of the shots we took directly into the sun.

Go figure.