Paramount style beauty light with two umbrellas

[texxter]

It doesn't take much money to do Hollywood style portraits. Here is one from my archives that I did in an office for a MUA's portfolio. Because of space constraits I used two portable flashes with shoot-thru umbrellas mounted on them, one in front of the model and pointing down, and the other below her chest and pointing up. I arranged for the power to be about 1 fstop apart to make sure the low fill didn't create its own shadows over the key light above. The background is a piece of white paper I taped to the wall of the office and didn't light, hence it turned gray. The model was pretty close to the umbrellas and the flashes were at low power. I killed the fluorescent light in the office by shooting at 1/250 sec.

I removed the bottom catchlight from her eyes in Photoshop to make her eyes look more natural. The model was 18 when I shot this and I had to do no skin retouching at all - perfect skin and good makeup. The tiara is a bit off, and this is a bit distracting.

This girl was beautiful, responded well to humor and gave me a natural expression of joy in this simple portrait.

When you're dreaming about mega softboxes, remember that umbrellas work well indoors and are very cheap and portable.



And here is the diagram of the simple lighting:

[Arcusmedia]

Cool Paco! I will have to try this at my next shoot!

[tukaniray]

Thanks for the diagram Paco ... always a pleasure to hear your lighting wisdom and see the charts.

-Ray-

[Flea77]

Isn't that what some of us call "clamshell" lighting, just a bit further apart than I normally use, but excellent for nice soft even lighting. Nice work with it!

Allan

[texxter]

Yes, it goes by glamour or beauty lighting, Paramount, clamshell, probably others.

[lukehng]

This is a nice / soft lighting style. Careful though, it will make your subject's face rounder that it really is :) .... Don't use it on you wife =P ... j/k

Good for model with nice skin, teen, baby (if you can get them to stand still).

A few shots I took using similar set up as Paco

[texxter]

it will make your subject's face rounder that it really is

This is a good point - a subject with a round, or extra facial weight will not benefit from this setup. On the other hand, a subject with a triangular or oval face will be flattered by it.

[Fireball]

Can you shoot into a reflective umbrella instead of shooting through one and still get the same results? I have one large reflective one with a black cover over the back and a couple of small white shoot-through ones. Maybe the reflective one would spread the light too wide?

[texxter]

Originally Posted by Fireball

Can you shoot into a reflective umbrella instead of shooting through one and still get the same results? I have one large reflective one with a black cover over the back and a couple of small white shoot-through ones. Maybe the reflective one would spread the light too wide?

The answer is generally yes. What's distinctive about this style is the positioning of the light coming from above, directly centered over the face. So you can achieve butterfly lighting with any light, as long as it is above the face and centered on it. The bigger the light, the less contrast it'll have - so if you use a large umbrella the shadow under the nose, typical of this butterfy style, will be low contrast.

The results will depend on the size of the light relative to the subject. amd the placement of the light with respect to the eyes. You cannot place a reflective umbrella as close to the face as you can a shoot-thru umbrella, so light fall off will be different, again, depending on distance to the subject. And the source of light for reflective is bigger than for shoot-thru, so the effect will be a bit different.

[Fireball]

Ok, I think I'm understanding this a bit more. Thanks for sharing your expertise Paco!