Shoot-a-week #6: Trying things with lights
This week's shoot was basically theme-less. I had a couple things I wanted to try with lighting, and a model who brought lots of skimpy outfits (I had suggested that one of my lighting ideas would be good for a lingerie-style shoot, so that's what she brought) so we just went with that.
The first experiment was working with using "short light," where the main light comes from the side of the face opposite the camera. I was going for a dramatic look, so I used very little fill. The photo on the right shows it with a second rim light, behind the model to camera right, which really improves it. (Yes, she also switched to underwear between setups. I said we were going for skimpy.) These worked out nicely ... eventually. I wound up with a lot of lens flare, because this setup points the main light toward the camera, and when I looked at my camera's display, I thought I was just seeing spill on my backdrop. Nope. Flare. Some pretty heavy post work got rid of it, more or less.
Second experiment was trying to use my big soft box, without either of the diffusion panels. I've always wondered exactly what that would look like. It turns out, as you would expect, to be a big, relatively hard, light source. (In the above photo, the soft box is to camera left, up about 45 degrees, and very close.) In future, I don't think I'm going to bother with this again. You get all the spill problems of a giant reflector and a hard light source, without anything else to really recommend it.
All in all, my experiments didn't go as well as I would have liked. I learned a lot, as you often do when you mess things up, but the pictures, while still good, didn't come out quite as nicely as I would have liked.
But, I did manage to push myself a little bit, playing with angles, and got this:
Art? Maybe not. I still like it.
There are a few more photos from this set on Flickr. I also added a few more from Shoot #4, with the cheetah mask; the ones with the dead came out really nice, once I figured out how to bring out the sky.
The first experiment was working with using "short light," where the main light comes from the side of the face opposite the camera. I was going for a dramatic look, so I used very little fill. The photo on the right shows it with a second rim light, behind the model to camera right, which really improves it. (Yes, she also switched to underwear between setups. I said we were going for skimpy.) These worked out nicely ... eventually. I wound up with a lot of lens flare, because this setup points the main light toward the camera, and when I looked at my camera's display, I thought I was just seeing spill on my backdrop. Nope. Flare. Some pretty heavy post work got rid of it, more or less.
Second experiment was trying to use my big soft box, without either of the diffusion panels. I've always wondered exactly what that would look like. It turns out, as you would expect, to be a big, relatively hard, light source. (In the above photo, the soft box is to camera left, up about 45 degrees, and very close.) In future, I don't think I'm going to bother with this again. You get all the spill problems of a giant reflector and a hard light source, without anything else to really recommend it.
All in all, my experiments didn't go as well as I would have liked. I learned a lot, as you often do when you mess things up, but the pictures, while still good, didn't come out quite as nicely as I would have liked.
But, I did manage to push myself a little bit, playing with angles, and got this:
Art? Maybe not. I still like it.
There are a few more photos from this set on Flickr. I also added a few more from Shoot #4, with the cheetah mask; the ones with the dead came out really nice, once I figured out how to bring out the sky.