By Scott Shephard

A few days ago I was asked by a friend to shoot a portrait of him and his fiancé. I haven’t done anything like this in at least a decade but of course I said, “Yes.” Because I would be shooting on a cloudy day in full shade I knew I needed flash and because there was a bit of a time crunch, I put flash directly on the camera, set the camera to “Aperture Priority,” and then looked for a good subject to practice on. And Deb said “Yes.”

I should say that she hasn’t seen this photo and doesn’t know that her photo is going out to all my Facebook friends and blog subscribers. In this case, forgiveness is easier to get than permission, though I’m sure she’ll be fine with this.

There are so many things to love about Deb but one is how comfortable she is in her own skin. Of course, she is also comfortable with me. I think both qualities show in this simple test portrait. It only took one shot.

For those looking for advice on getting a good portrait of a person “of a certain age,” the first thing I’d say is look for good soft, frontal light, which will do much to soften the lines we have so proudly earned. Look for shade or soft window light. In my case I used flash set in a way that didn’t overpower the natural light in this location.

The other piece of advice I’d give is don’t be tempted to change too much in editing software. With this photo, other than to adjust white balance and to create a vignette, I did nothing. Really!

But of course, it helps to have a “pretty good subject.”

Canon R5 f 2.8 1/200 sec ISO 100