First try with lights C&C welcome....

[mbradley]

I finally bought some lights this weekend, and asked (ya right ) my son to help me test them. I'm having some trouble when I save as jpg for the web in keeping the white background, true white, so any help on that would be appreciated. Other than that, any other comments would be appreciated.

[RightAngle]

It seems to be a little over exposed IMO. I pulled it into LR to do some tone adjustments with levels and I had to bring the exposure down a bit before it started to behave.

[mbradley]

even for high key?

[CaptainTom]

Originally Posted by six_o_seven

even for high key?

Yes

[mbradley]

Originally Posted by CaptainTom

Yes

thanks, I can bring that down. I was looking at the different examples of high key online and they go from total whiteout to good contrast/color. I was playing with the extremes, but I need to get the classic down first before I go way out.

[canoflan]

Just a recommendation: www.strobist.com. Learn learn learn about lighting and the properties thereof in terms of what happens with light intensity, distance from subject, etc....

Unless this is the look you are going for and really like it, my suggestion is you learn all you can about light and how to replicate the look you are after.

Perhaps tells us what look you are after, then we can tell you what you might want to do with your lighting setup.

This look simply doesn't seem to flatter the subject well and is frankly hard to look at. The light is just so harsh and part of the face is blown out.

Provide somemore feedback and we will keep working with you on it.
Pat

[myelphoto]

My opinion the light might be too close to the object or too strong that resulted in overexposing the pictures. what was the aperture and shutter speed?

[mbradley]

sorry about this, in my initial post I should have said this one one out of a couple hundred that I took over the weekend, testing the different lighting positions that I had been exposed to on websites like Strobist, and others. I played with high key, low key, shadows, etc, so I am taking the advice to play and learn. :) . I should have posted the original out of the camera, instead of the white out one I did. This is the same shot, but I didn't take it into photoshop and start playing with it. It was shot with two 500 watt thru two silver umbrellas onto the background, one 500w flood camera right and a silver reflector camera left. camera settings were 1/160 at f2.8, auto white balance. I did convert to a temp of 3550 based on the lights in Lightroom.

My initial question was about exports out to jpg and not being able to keep the background a true white as you can see in the repost. My initial thought on this is I don't have the background lights correct, but I'm thinking it might be a post processing problem I don't know about when exporting out of lightroom or photoshop.

I do appreciate the comments about the whiteout shot, because after looking at it again, I agree it just doesn't flatter the subject.

Mark...

[RightAngle]

okay things make a lot more sense now!