I had a model bail on me just hours before I was to begin my workshop. I began going through my list of reliable models. The first person that came to mind was Everyn. I shot with Everyn for the first time almost exactly four years ago today. It was only her second shoot and I knew she had what it took to be a successful model. In subsequent shoots she always showed up, present, and ready to work.
Since that time, she’s moved to the other side of the camera and has left modeling behind, but she agreed to help me out and came down to the studio to pose for my workshop. I don’t usually do any shooting at my workshops, but it was so great to see her modeling again that I had to snap at least a few pictures.
I didn’t shoot every set, but I had to sneak in a few. In this first set, I’m using one of my new favorite lighting setups. It’s just an umbrella boomed straight overhead. I love that either myself or the model can change positions around the light to get a variety of shadow patterns depending on whether you want to focus more on beauty or more on form.
This second set was done with a somewhat similar setup, but with a strip box boomed instead of the umbrella. I draped some plastic over the strip box and then shot a blue gelled light at the back wall. I figured the plastic would pick up some highlights from the light and would add some texture, some dimension, and maybe movement to the shot. I could control the direction of the light hitting her by having her behind, under or in front of the light.
And the third set I shot was with a single light… kind of. At least that was the plan. I wanted the right side of the picture to fall into darkness, so I used a single octabox to camera left. But I couldn’t get any shadow. I was confused. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out where the light was coming from to lighten the shadows and why the light looked so warm. Then one of the participants pointed out that I had left a light that I had gelled withe a red gel was firing off at the back of the room. It was pointed towards the back wall. As it bounced back, it provided a really soft red fill in the shadows. You can see the red in the shadows and the reflection off in the sheen of her dress in these first few images. It was not what I was going for, but it looked great and now I have a new lighting setup I can use again. I took a few shots and then turned the red-gelled strobe off to take a few more.
And just for fun, here are a couple of shots from our first shoot together four years ago.
