It's important to maintain rapport with the model, which is difficult to do while fiddling with the camera. You need to get everything set up first. Using studio flash, I set to manual: 1/200th, being the flash synchronisation speed. Match aperture and flash power to get the exposure. Most of these were at f14. This arrangement is completely the opposite to what I use when shooting portraits out of the studio: aperture priority with a wide aperture to blur the background. In the studio, everything including the background should be under control. With the flash power available I can have a small aperture and plenty of depth of field, so a crisp image is usually obtained. If required, it can be degraded in the computer. The camera was hand-held. If it were on a tripod then a bit of focus latitude would help keep the all-important eyes in focus.
Something I didn't do with these was to set the White Balance on the camera to Flash instead of Auto, and I think this accounts for the colour variations.
The inclination of the head here is attractive; the model looks engaged. Could have done with a little more light on her right eye.
That's better. The slight rotation of the head has given me the light I wanted. While it's difficult for the model to make millimetric adjustments of position, it's quicker than lugging the lighting gear about.
I've included this one to contrast with the next:
I much prefer this very similar shot: The arm's not in front of the model; the cheek's not distorted by the hand; there's more modelling on the face; but most of all, the eyes are slightly more open, which gives a subtle but important change of expression. This is the picture I'd have on my desk!
Rapport is important. As Kurt Vonnegut said, "If you can still laugh, then all is not lost."
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