Photoberg LLC

07/23/2026

Today is a recreate yet ANOTHER Angelina Jolie portrait, lol. Kate is back helping me and this time wanted to add some of her own flair and create by wearing an outfit inspired by William Defoe’s iconic portraits. I really liked how this one light set up turned out and have bookmarked William Defoe’s portraits to study in their own right.
As I said, the background lighting might have been different as the original is very even and there might have been another light there. To accomplish that, I would have had to add more distance than I wanted (or could) so kept it the way it was and added some brightening in post.
Camera:
Sony A7V
ISO200, f/8, 250s
24-70mm
FJ Westcott 400 at 1/16 + 0.5
Background is by Raubay

07/21/2026

Today is a particularly exciting recreate for me. It’s Ernest Hemingway taken by legend Yusuf Karsh. While I again lack the facial maturity and beard to truly duplicate this portrait😅👶, it was fun to see how I could create the lighting patterns using modern lights and camera. The example portrait probably isn’t the best and I found a number of different ones that had different light values. But it was still a fun two-light set up.
Also exciting for me is announcing an upcoming workshop I’m delivering this October in Olten Switzerland! I’ve been invited by the co-founder of the International Photo Festival Olten (IFPO) to do a workshop on Portrait Lighting techniques. If anyone is interested in the details, comment OLTEN and I’ll shoot you the link to the page!
Camera:
Sony A7V
ISO200, 1/1250s, f/8
Lens 85mm
Godox AD400 at 1/4 power
Godox AD200 at 1/32 +0.7

07/19/2026

Today I attempt another Marco Grob portrait, this one of Jonah Hill. This one was really fun for me to do because it broke the rules of your “standard” Portrait Lighting and still produced a great result. The key light was more level with the eyes, the fill was pointed up at an angle and chromatic aberration was either left in or added intentionally. These are all things you’d normally avoid in portrait photography, but Marco was able to take all these “no-no”s and create something really unique.
Camera:
Hasselblad X2D II
ISO200, 1/1250s, f/8
Lens 90mm
Full Frame Settings
ISO200, 1/250s, f/6.3
Lens 70mm
Godox AD300 at 1/32
Godox V100 at 1/128 + 0.7
Background by Raubay

07/16/2026

Today is a recreate of another one of Lindsay Adler portraits, using her own Optical Spot. You can actually do a ton of things with this attachment, but today I kept it simple. This is a two light set up with a pure white background giving a silhouette of the model, but with a spot of light on the eye.
Thanks again to Kate who assisted me in getting this cool black and white portrait.
Camera:
Sony A7V
ISO200, f/8, 250s
135mm
FJ Westcott 250 at 1/8 + 0.5
FJ Westcott 400 at 1/16 + 0.7
Lindsay Adler’s Optical Spot
Background is a Westcott Vflat
blackandwhiteportrait

07/15/2026

Today is an inspiration image showing a cool feature of some flashes, specifically the FJWestcott flash. It’s called Delay Mode. And it basically allows you to have different times multiple flashes fire in one shot. There’s a lot of room for creation here and I did a simple sitting pose, reminding myself of those old school photos. I had set it to five seconds to allow myself enough time to move from one position to another.
It’s important for this to have no other lights, which also can make it difficult to pose and be in camera. I feel I just touched on the surface of uses for this. Also not sure who took the original photograph which this one was inspired by.
Camera:
Sony A7V
ISO100, f/18, 5s
85mm
FJ Westcott 250 at 6.5
FJ Westcott 400 at 4.5
I used two reflectors, left with a 50 degree grid and the right one had a 30 degree.

07/14/2026

I’ve never met a professional at the top of their game who didn’t have their basic fundamentals down cold.
Each of these lighting terms could have their own chapter dedicated to them, but I thought it would be helpful to display them in a basic step by step way.
I used every godox light I had for this😅

07/13/2026

Today’s recreate is another Angelina Jolie portrait (can you tell I’m a fan?) and I wasn’t able to track down a match on the original photographer so feel free to comment if you know. This is a simple one light portrait which was elevated by both a hand-painted backdrop along with the beautiful color profile in the Hasselblad. I’m starting to really like the 3:4 aspect ratio for a crop, versus the 2:3 that is native to a full frame.
A new face here today is Kate Kiddo who was awesome for helping me out. We did a number photoshoots today which I’m excited to share as I roll them out.
Camera:
Hasselblad X2D II
ISO100, 1/125s, f/8
90mm lens
Full Frame settings
ISO100, 1/125, f/6.3
Godox AD400 at 1/8 + 0.3 (you might need to decrease a bit with a full frame)
Background by Gravity Backdrops

07/11/2026

Taking a short detour from a lighting tutorial, I wanted to share some things I’ve learned in the past six months as a photographer and now content creator.
I think I’ve worked the hardest I ever have this year, and feeling like I’m just getting started… 😁😁
Stay tuned for the next lighting tutorial!

07/10/2026

Today I’m recreating a portrait of Muse taken by photographer Nick Fancher . He’s a master at color and I’m currently knee deep in his book Chroma: A Photographer’s Guide To Lighting With Color. If anyone is already familiar with using flash and wants to get their feet wet with using gels and mixing colors, I highly recommend it. It’s an easy read, he doesn’t get super technical and most of the lights he uses are all speed lights so it’s very accessible. Unlike this video where I used two expensive constant lights… anyway I really liked how this image turned out, but I also learned a few things in the process.
Camera:
Sony A7V
ISO400, 1/60, f/4
Lens 70mm
White Balance 5600
Background light: LITEMONS LA300R
Hue 360, Sat 100%, Int 100%
Spotlight: amaran Ray360c
Hue 213, Sat 100%, Int 7%

07/09/2026

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