More practice with portrait lighting. Key light (soft box) was to camera left and above my head, with a bit of fill light (soft box) on my right side (as you look at me). I held a white poster-board on my lap to bounce light up to soften shadows under my jaw. Post process I softened the clarity of the portrait in Adobe Bridge.
I’ve been putzing around with these all day in between doing chores and running around. Anyway, I need to start working on using clamshell lighting. I’ve used it before when we shot models in our lighting class, but in that case, our instructor set everything up. Today I took a stab at it. Here is a very simple explanation of clamshell lighting, for those of you not familiar with the concept.
Obviously I’m going to need to practice this quite a bit (and with someone other than myself!).
For this next one I put an accent light behind me.
Maybe I should hire a model? The shoot I thought I was going to do may not come to fruition, so you are stuck with me again. I’m working on getting the lighting right: no weird shadows, getting highlights in hair, and creating shape.
Okay…set up: Soft box at 45 degree angle to subject (me) at camera right. Light was about 6-feet high and angled down (that’s the light that you see on the top of my head). Light over my shoulder was my Speedlite at about 1/8 intensity bounced from umbrella. Pop-up flash at lowest intensity (1/124) used to fire Speedlite, but at that intensity did little add illumination.
In the shot below the Speedlite did not fire, but I still like the lighting in this one.
The birds appear to have beaten us to most of the pears, but our apple tree and grapevines are going gangbusters.
Just messing around in my make-shift light studio today. My friend gave me some seamless paper, so I tacked it to the wall and set up my lights. I needed the practice because it looks like I’ve got another portrait gig coming up and I wanted to be sure I was comfortable with my lights and backdrop. Besides, I just need to keep practicing and trying new things.
You can find more from my shoot at my new gallery, 56.
Busy – from before dawn until the time I went to bed. Didn’t even get to pull my camera from the bag. So, I have to pull something from another day.
I took this a couple of days ago . . . Nina farting around in the backyard, hoping to find a lizard under the roll of chicken wire.
And here is another one of the still life photos I shot the other night. I created shadow by holding a board above the light and using it to block light falling on the foreground. I like what the pepper is doing in the stem of the wine glass.
Practice, practice, practice!
UPDATE:
Set up for first two: Soft box to camera left at a 45º angle. About 5 feet in the air, angled down slightly. Reflector card to right of peppers.
Third shot: same but dropped soft box a couple of feet. You can see the change in direction.
Set up for wine glass shot: Moved soft box light so light reflected off backdrop through wine glass. White reflector card held above and to right of objects for fill.
White continuous backdrop (which is a window shade, $11 at Walmart) for all.
Also, I’ve started a Still Life gallery at SmugMug which will give you all the details on ISO, aperture and shutter speed.
I would have preferred to use Sweetie for this, but he was busy taking the dog to the vet. And it’s not as though I can go drag someone in off the street. Once again, my light study involves me.
Carissa Snedeker Photography 