Would you like to see your work on the cover of a magazine? Maybe even on my little ol’Good Light! Magazine? Then I have a few technical tips for you. We recently held a little workshop at a trade fair called Photokina. Playboy playmate Coxy Dominika was posing on the Phottix stage for us and we were allowed to play with the prototype of the awesome new Indra500 TTL Studio Light.
So we quickly set up a one light setup with the Indra light in an octa box above camera angled downwards to Coxy. Our participants one by one came up on stage and were shooting totally awesome, cover-worthy photos right there.
While the visitors were happily shooting, I explained a concept that’s supposed to make cover photos very E.A.S.Y.
E – Eye Contact
Photos with strong eye contact engage potential readers more than photos without eyes looking away. Want to make the contact with your lens even stronger? Then let the model lean towards your lens retaining that strong eye contact and probably try to shoot a shorter lens, around 35mm.
A – Angled Light
In order to visualize the features of your model, the light of your flash must come from a certain angle. Shooting with the light coming straight from next to your camera will flatten out her face and her body. You don’t want that.
S – Sharpness
A small aperture, at least f/11 (fullframe) is your friend when it comes to cover photos. Eliminate blurriness. Make sure that the closest eye is really sharp and that your model is crisp from front to backside.
Y – Yield Space
Don’t crop into your model on your cover photo. Leaving negative space around the model will give the editor some positioning room. A lot of space should be left especially if the photo background will be part of the cover.
Keep E.A.S.Y. in mind whenever you are shooting something that potentially should find it’s way onto a cover.
I wish you good light!
Michael
Model: Coxy Dominika,
Photography Coach: Ortwin Schneider, Studio Fotomagic
Special thanks to the awesome Achim Dunker from Netlektionen.de for helping me with this video!
Check out his webinars (in German), they rock!