This one is not really a portrait but a series of shots in a master class for cooking. My GF was treated to a of a master class in cooking in a demo kitchen set up for teaching gourmet cooking by 6 of her girlfriends just last Sunday. The class was even interesting to me, the chef was the head chef for the new Lion Palace Four Seasons Hotel, the top hotel in St Petersburg. The hotel is in a stunning palace that took 10 years of restoration to turning it into a luxury hotel, which opened just last fall. I took a lot of photos of the girls preparing each dish under the supervision of the master chef. It was a lot of fun and the resulting food was wonderful. During the cooking, a 3 hour class that ended up 6.5 hours because we were having so much fun and the fine wine, and champagne was flowing freely. 380 shots later, with full stomachs, high spirits and good feelings, we were fully satisfied that it was a great birthday present.
Here is one of the girls who organized the event, my GF's long time girlfriend, about 36 yo....not sure since it is not polite to ask women:>)

Here is one of Victoria, after a few too many glasses of wine
And this is a snap shot of the chef's assistant, who pour the wine, prepared the ingredient that were used in the 4 course meal

These shots were with a strong window light as the main source, the modern demo kitchen had dark grey walls and black marble floor but the whole north facing was glass overlooking the Gulf of Finland coastline. The first photo was strongly backlit so I used flash mounted in a small 40cmx40cm softbox close into her face to fill to balance the window light and her face which was in deep shadow. The second two shots had the girls facing the wall of windows so just a bit of fill was used. This was late in the evening towards the end, 9pm but the sun was still high in the sky this time of year, setting around midnight but never getting dark. Sun rise this week is about 4am. Window light is great if diffused but can create glare, very nice portraits can be done solely with window light early in the day or late afternoon or early evening. A large window are creates a large light source that wraps around the subject so shadows had soft edges that can be very flattering.
Here is a shot with 90% window light, Masha was learning the proper way to make pasta shells with squid ink. She flew in from Spain for the party, she is from St Petersburg but spends the summer at her family beach villa in southern Spain on a beautiful secluded beach.

It was fun, even I learned a lot and I am not handy in the kitchen, and what could be better than a great meal surrounded by beautiful cooks?