Settings: Ambient is 3 or 4 stops underexposed. Left light is a flash into a silver umbrella at 2 stops above neutral grey, and right flash is through a Lumiquest softbox 2 at 1 stop above neutral grey.
I have felt a bit like I might be trying too hard to deviate from "safe" and standard lighting, so I have been wanting to try some more traditional lighting setups. By putting the umbrella at the same height as his head, and aiming it horizontally instead of angled down, it emulates window lighting quit well, and is very soft. The right side light does an ok job of filling, but I think either another umbrella, or just bouncing that flash off the ceiling to raise the light of the room would have looked nicer. It would have kept the harsh shadow from the left side of his nose.
The background is just a piece of black posterboard taped to the wall. I'm going to add to my kit a length of black, and white fabric to use as quick backdrops.
Settings: Ambient is 3 or 4 stops underexposed. Left light is a flash into a silver umbrella at 2 stops above neutral grey, and right flash is bare, zoomed to 105mm at 3 stop above neutral grey.
For this shot, first Agust got ready for the Gothtasm Halloween party by dying his hair and applying makeup. Since it was such an effort, I decided it would be good to document it. This is a fairly standard setup also. The silver umbrella is a little high and aimed down, to produce nice directional lighting. The right flash provides a really nice rim light along the cheek and back of the head, for a bit of separation from the background. I think this is easily my favorite lighting setup.
I had to get in on the action too.
As a slight aside, I recently purchased a photo editing monitor. The HP LP2475w. It's a 24" monitor that uses an S-IPS panel, which is a true 8 bit panel, that does a very wide gamut of colors. It's a huge upgrade from my little 17" laptop, both in color accuracy and brightness. I also got a monitor calibrator to ensure color accuracy. Even just looking at other people's photos is more fun now, because I can see so much more detail and dynamic range. I highly suggest ensuring you have a good monitor with accurate color (either an S-IPS or S-PVA panel, not all LCD panels are made the same way, TN and TFT which is the most common used panels, are not true 8 bit color) and a monitor calibrator to ensure you're getting your colors correct. I know I've been over compensating for my poor monitor quality in past photos by pushing the contrast and colors a bit too far.
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