LED Continuous Light: 5 Creative Portrait Shoots with Sebastian Nagel

Photographer Sebastian Nagel shows in five creative portrait shootings how impressive portraits can be achieved on the go with Lumen LED continuous lights:

Portrait Shooting 1: Highway Bridge
Portrait Shooting 2: Server Room in a Cinema
Portrait Shooting 3: Kurhaus Wiesbaden
Portrait Shooting 4: Plane Trees
Portrait Shooting 5: Parking Garage

Portrait Shooting 1: Highway Bridge

It's cool and cloudy on this Thursday morning in February, which we chose for a shooting with photographer Sebastian Nagel. Our first session takes place at a highway overpass at the end of a play street, which is located near the Lauertalbrücke in Kaiserslautern. So, we set up our equipment there, while model Anna waits in the car due to the cold.

On the small bridge there are wooden walls on the sides and a small stone ruin. But why exactly did the photographer choose this particular bridge? He explains: "I like straight lines in photos. That's why the bridge is very suitable, and we also have a good draft, which, with Anna's curly mane, makes a perfect combination."

Shooting Lumen Sticks Bridge

Aperture	Shutter	ISO
2.8	1/200	125

Nagel works with our Lumen Sticks (RGB), placing one on each side of the bridge. Both lamps are set to 100 percent – one in blue, one in red. Both lamps are directed at Anna, but slightly angled. This creates a subtle rim light on her, ensuring that the overall colors in the image are not overwhelmed but have a bit of breathing room. This results in a fantastic interplay of individual color tones, especially in combination with the anthracite of the bridge.

Sebastian Nagel further explains that he chose red and blue here because "complementary colors generally harmonize very well, which creates particularly beautiful reflections in the eyes. So, we're creating a kind of warm-cold contrast, which I personally always find very interesting in photos."

Among other things, he finds it positive about the Lumen Sticks that they not only have a quarter-inch thread, but also an adapter for 3/8″ housed in the handle of the sticks, so that a light stand can easily be used. Nagel has a tip for using the sticks with batteries:

(Note: this is the predecessor model. The new model of the Lumen Stick RGB has an integrated and non-removable handle with a ¼″ thread. For mounting on a lamp stand, we recommend our Spigot Adapter)

"It's important that the batteries are always as close to the tripod as possible, so that the light stand doesn't tip forward, which would be unfavorable, even though the sticks are very robust." - Sebastian Nagel

Portrait Shooting 2: Server Room in a Cinema

Our next shoot takes place in a cinema's server room, where old projectors stand, but also many cables and cinema seats can be found. Again, we get that cozy, old attic feeling, but here we are primarily interested in close-up portraits of Anna to test our new bicolor ring light, which is called the Lumen Ring Bicolor.

Shooting Ring Light Cinema

Aperture	Shutter	ISO
2.8	1/200	250

Here, we use the ring light at both 3,200 and 4,500 Kelvin, which leaves a fantastic halo effect in Anna's eyes.

The Lumen Ring Bicolor is particularly well-suited for content creators, such as those active on YouTube or Instagram. Beauty bloggers appreciate it because it has a particularly natural color rendering index (CRI) of 95+.

Portrait Shooting 3: Kurhaus Wiesbaden

For our next shooting, a model unfortunately cancelled at short notice. Therefore, we had to move another model named Laura forward at short notice, who was originally planned for another location, but then stepped in to do several short shootings with us in Wiesbaden. For example, in front of the Kurhaus.
The Kurhaus in Wiesbaden is a particularly beautiful building in the Neoclassical style, which opened in 1907 and was then described by Kaiser Wilhelm II as the most beautiful Kurhaus in the world. The truthfulness of this statement is probably difficult to verify, but it can definitely be said that it is a beautiful building.

Shooting Lumen Pro Plane Trees

Aperture	Shutter	ISO
2.8	1/500	250

So, a wonderful location for our shooting, which is favored not only by the building but also by fountains and lush green lawns. Here we use our also brand new continuous light Lumen Pro, which is battery-powered and therefore very well suited for quick shoots. Set up in a flash, shoot, pack up in a flash. We use it at 3200 Kelvin and 100 percent brightness.

Sebastian Nagel can explain particularly easily why he uses the Lumen Pro: "We need a lot of power, work with 100 watts of output and also with an open aperture to blur the background a bit. So we want to isolate Laura a bit and make her stand out from the background. We also used slightly warmer light to bring out a natural skin tone." And he succeeded brilliantly, as the final pictures show.

Portrait Shooting 4: Plane Trees

The next short shooting takes place on Wilhelmstraße, which offers a beautiful avenue of plane trees on one side and is lined with numerous fashion shops on the other.

At that time, traffic was still very heavy, and the many passers-by curiously watched what we were doing. That's why the mobility of the lights benefits us here again, as we can set up and dismantle particularly quickly before and after the shoot, without disturbing anyone.

Shooting Lumen Ring Light

Aperture	Shutter	ISO
3.2	1/160	250

Here, the Lumen Pro and the Bicolor Ring Light are in use, with Nagel setting a brightness for each that balances between 3,700 and 4,000 Kelvin, ensuring that Laura stands out from her surroundings while the plane trees simultaneously form a natural frame around her. In between, we change sides of the street so that we can also capture passing car lights with the dramatic effect of red and blue Lumen Sticks. Here too, Sebastian Nagel shoots with a very open aperture so that he can create a particularly beautiful bokeh with the lights of cyclists and cars.

Shooting Lumen Sticks Plane Trees

When asked why he generally likes to work with the Lumen Sticks, he says:

"Well, it's super good that they are so ultra-handy and light, and the battery life is just brilliant. I've shot with them for three, four, five hours, and the batteries always lasted without any problems. Logically, the handling via the app is also really good. That it can all be controlled via Bluetooth." - Sebastian Nagel

Shooting Continuous Light Parking Garage

Portrait Shooting 5: Parking Garage

Our last location is a parking garage. This is another particularly exciting shoot, not just in terms of color. The floor of the parking garage is orange-red, and here too, we have a great vanishing point into which Sebastian Nagel can photograph. But it's also exciting because it has to be done particularly quickly. Again, we use the Lumen Pro RGB at 4200-4500 Kelvin, illuminating Laura once from behind and once from the front. All in all, an exciting shooting day with results that speak for themselves.