Experiments with lighting

At the bottom of this post are a couple of images from a quick test shoot I did with my daughter. It came about because I’m working on a couple of new DVD’s that require portraits. One is a live action DVD that will teach a bunch of lighting setups and tips. The other is a Lightroom 3 training DVD on working with portraits.

These shots were the result of me testing a simple two light setup and a new background donated to me from a retiring professional photographer and an all round decent chap called Frank Page.

As is often the case, I like to share my knowledge with anyone mad enough to stop and listen, so here is the lighting setup I used.

It’s a really simple set up that’s great for head shots when you need smooth skin tones and gentle lighting. The only this missing from the diagram is a fan which I used to add movement to her hair.

The background was illuminated with a honeycomb grid light and that gives a natural vignette to the image. The power of the lights was carefully controlled to give me a working aperture of f4 which blurred away the creases on the background cloth.

And finally here are the photos. The first image is "as shot", without any Photoshop tricks being applied (apart from the border).

And this one is the same setup again but with the Vibrence turned way down in Adobe Camera RAW, which added to the slightly sad, far away look in her eyes.