Fun in the studio and the water (5 images)

[texxter]

So I had a second session today - a lovely Middle Eastern young lady with no experience in front of the camera I met thru MM. We did a bit of this and that, and we mostly had fun, with Black Eye Peas blasting on the stereo. The commercial looking images are for my stock library and the bathing suit ones are for her. She was a bit self-conscious about her looks initially, and it took a while to break the ice and get into the swing of shooting.

Here are some images from the longish (for me) session, about 2.5 hours. The one in the morning was just one hour.

#1. I did this with a gridded beauty dish. She drank all the water! Here I wanted a tanned look to go with the fitness theme, whereas the ones below are more "office white balanced" to match a more corporate look.



#2. Just goofing around, I made fun of her wrinkled red blouse before she put it on and she was trying to hid it by posing sideways and pulling the bow thingie in front. I like the spontaneous smile here.



#3. We laughed a lot with a game I came up that required her to act out a short sentence. The first one on the left was "I can't believe it!"



#4. Switching to an innocent sexy look, before she put her bikini on. Lit with the El Cheapo ebay octabox, like 2 and 3 above.



#5. In my pool - her eyes got red with the chlorine right away, and I haven't yet postprocessed this redness out. Lighting here is not great, but it's not too bad - the light coming from camera left is the late afternoon sun, and the fill is a large Photoflex panel with a gold/silver combo reflector. Yeap, chopped off a finger on this one, as I was paying attention to her eyes. No flash used, the catchlights are from the reflector panel.

[bryanlindsey]

Nits - #1, couple water spots on her top (she must have been really thirsty!). #5, couple droplets of water on her face I find distracting, but maybe that's just me.

[greg194799]

Nice composition and lighting, thanks for sharing.

[idnurse41]

Every time I look at your work I just absolutely love it! Thanks for explaining how you do the lighting! Always inspired by you.

[texxter]

Bryan, greg, Pamela, thank you very much for the comments and the feedback!

Bryan, yes, she was getting pretty wet trying to do the first shot, as I wanted a very particular position of the arm and the bottle and every time she tried she drank more water, and it was getting on her face. We had fun, though. On the pool shot she was going in and out of the pool, and she had baby oil on her skin (I wasn't the lucky one to apply it ) so water was beading on her, hopefully to make the image look more real.

Pamela, I am glad you find the images helpful!

My family is out so I dismantled the living room to set up the equipment for the sessions this weekend - this has to go back to "normal" before they show up!

[tukaniray]

^^ Awesome set up, taking over the living room. Nice.

Just out of curiosity, were you intentionally going for a bit more harsh light to the right of the suit shot as oppose to the other shots against the white BG? Just felt there was more light on her left cheeks. Again, just curious.

I like the swimsuit shot.

-Ray-

[jss001]

How did the bg in the swimsuit photo end up that dark ?

Jeff

[texxter]

Ray, which two images are you comparing? Give me the numbers, I am sorry I didnt quite follow your question.

Jeff, there is no postprocessing manipulation of the background, it was like that out of camera. The reason is simple and twofold - the model was receiving direct sunlight whereas the background was in the shade thanks to a tree in the backyard. Secondly, I was pumping more light into the model and exposing for a correct skin tone - I added light with the silver/gold reflector, about 1 f-stop or so. By doing this the dynamic range betwen the main subject and the background went wider, and the background received less exposure. I you didn't follow this I can explain it again with an example.

Thanks

[jss001]

That does make sense although I don't have enough experience to realize that is exactly what you are doing and of course the shade ( duh ! ) makes the most sense to me...I'm darkened the bg before by increasing the SS and using flash as the main light, but since you didn't use a flash, I was curious...the reality is that your use of the natural light and the reflector is equiv (not quality wise) to a flash in this context. Appreciate the info.

Jeff

[texxter]

Jeff, you're absolutely right - the reflector and a flash would do the same thing, add illumination to ambient. With flash you expose the background independently of the subject by changing the shutter speed while keep the aperture correct for the amount of flash illumination. With a reflector you set the aperture/shutter to give you true skin tonality and this automatically makes the background darker as you're adding light to the subject but not the background.

Consider a scene where both the main subject and the background are exposed to sunlight, without any trees. Say a correct exposure for both the subject and the background was 1/125 at f/8. If you add a reflector with 1-fstop illumination to the subject, the exposure for the subject would need to to be 1/125 f/16 - which means that the background, which is not receiving reflected light, is underexposed by 1 f-stop. That's the idea.

Note that it works exactly the opposite when you place a diffusor between the sun and the subject. The exposure has to change to respond to the reduced illumination. A 1 f-stop rip nylon diffusion panel will give you a 1 f-stop overexposed background. This is the same principle that applies to exposing a subject in the shade when the background is in full sun.

Knowing how using a reflector or a diffusor impacts the background allows you to make more conscious decisions about your light.

One final point is that if you're underexposing the background as a result of using a reflector, but you don't want it underexposed because it's important to see it, then you simply add a flash to the background, or reflect light onto it.

[jss001]

Thanks - very good explanation...may I send you a PM ?

Jeff

[tukaniray]

Sorry Paco. I was comparing #1 to #2&3. Just wondered if the extra bit of light on the left side of her face was intentional. I would have though it was to much light on her left.

Because your #1 seems evenly lit. ... again just wondering. I wouldn't dare question your skills. Just want to better understand them. ... So I can one day be a light artist like you.

-Ray-

[dlanter]

Very nice Paco. I'm not a portrait shooter but I enjoy playing with it occasionally and your posts always teach me more & more about lighting.

[RKEnnis]

Paco,

Thanks for another extremely informative post! The top down view of the setup is particularly useful.

I'm learning a ton from reading your posts, and I really appreciate you putting so much time and effort into them.

[texxter]

Thanks - very good explanation...may I send you a PM ?

Absolutely!

Sorry Paco. I was comparing #1 to #2&3. Just wondered if the extra bit of light on the left side of her face was intentional. I would have though it was to much light on her left.

Because your #1 seems evenly lit. ... again just wondering. I wouldn't dare question your skills. Just want to better understand them. ... So I can one day be a light artist like you.

Ray, I not only welcome your suggestions and critiques, but I encourage you to do so. I am just as good as my last picture, and I need to continue to work on my growth, like everyone else!

I understand what you're saying now. The contrast on the suit images is high - yes, this is due to two reasons: (1) the cheap Ebay octabox has a silver lining, which creates contrasty light with high specular highlights, and (2) I had a negative fill on the left to create more contrast. Was this intentional? Yes, I want to really understand my modifiers so that I am not suprised by the results. Was this the best choice for this type of portrait? Not necessarily. I believe that the Photoflex octabox would have given me a better look.

Very nice Paco. I'm not a portrait shooter but I enjoy playing with it occasionally and your posts always teach me more & more about lighting.

Paco,

Thanks for another extremely informative post! The top down view of the setup is particularly useful.

I'm learning a ton from reading your posts, and I really appreciate you putting so much time and effort into them.

Thank you Dan and Randy very much! I enjoy sharing my experiences with light!