Budget creative portraits

Mike Harris uses a bunch of budget umbrellas to capture a series of creative and exciting fashion portraits

Shoot fun portraits with minimum spend

There’s something magical about umbrellas. The one belonging to Harry Potter fan favourite Hagrid doubles as a wand, Mary Poppins’ talking parrot umbrella is her chosen form of transport and Gene Kelly’s brolly in Singin’ in the Rain stars in one of the most famous dance routines in Hollywood history…

It’s not surprising, then, that umbrellas make great photography props, too. In this tutorial, we’ve used four umbrellas to produce four very different portraits. The image opposite was inspired by P. L. Travers’ Mary Poppins and features a classic black umbrella. We created the convincing flying effect by using a stepladder and Adobe Photoshop (and a generous helping of magic).

The bokeh-filled image on page 48 was created by taping a string of battery-powered LED lights to a clear brolly. A very wide aperture was then used to create the super-shallow depth of field. For our next shoot we used a rainbow umbrella, which our model spun as we took the shot. The slow shutter-speed blended the colours together to produce a vibrant background.

Our final example features a lace parasol. Held in direct sunlight, it shrouded our model in patterns of shadow, courtesy of the lace material’s intricate design. We spent less than £40 on all our props combined, so grab a few brollies and get shooting your own creative portraits, spit spot!

Expert Tip

IF THE BOOT FITS

The most stable position for our ladder to be in meant that it partially obscured our model’s right leg and boot. After we captured the main image, we quickly photographed her boot from the same angle and in the same light. We then cut around it in Adobe Photoshop and added it to our final image. Finally, we used the Puppet Warp tool to angle the boot in a more suitable position.

A ‘nifty fifty’ is suitable for every project. Our Nikon 50mm f/1.8g’s fast aperture was particularly useful when trying to capture bokeh. We spent less than £40 on our props, which included four umbrellas, a string of LED lights and a pair of fake glasses. A tripod and stepladder were used to create our flying umbrella image.