Lighting is the most important thing in his sessions

Our current feature is dedicated to photographer Ismael M. Lopez, who is based in Algeciras in the south of Spain.

Ismael discovered photography by accident as in 2012 a friend gave him an "old" Nikon d70s as a present. He didn't had a clue about how it works, so decided to look for a camera manual on the internet.

Luckily he found an article about the D70s in a website   about   lighting,   www.strobist.com.   In
the   internet   Ismael  could  learn,  how   to  light

properly, using small and inexpensive flashes. It was an amazing discovery and from that moment until now photography and lighting goes hand in hand for him.

After reading a lot about lighting, Ismael started to practice shooting some friends in a tiny space in his living room. At the beginning he was scared to work with unknown people.

Although he loves his "home studio", it was very limiting. So he soon moved outdoors to shoot portraits and fashion.

Ismael was influenced by a lot of photographers, but got influenced most by Joanna Kustra and Emily Soto.

Nowadays Ismael tries to improve his skills every day. Lighting is the most important thing in his sessions and he normally uses dramatic lighting (Rembrant, short lighting, under exposing the ambient) and shallow depth of field."

If you like to see more of Ismael’s fantastic photos, you can take a look at his Flickr-Stream or at his 500px portfolio.