Tag Archive for: continious lighting

Just a chandelier

/in , /by

Sometimes you need a lot, and sometimes not

Having an extra background system in your studio is great.
You can use it to hang fabrics from and create more depth in your set, but you can also use it hang a chandelier from.

During the workshop “alternative lighting” I’m not using strobes.
All the shots have to be done with continuous lighting, and although I do use our Nanlite led strips as fill or mainlight in some setups, the idea is to use light sources that are not designed for photography. Like a chandelier.

In this setup I’m using a great background from ClickBackdrops
But the lighting you see is just the chandelier. The trick is have the right distance.
You don’t want the chandelier to blow out too much (you can always use the “highlights” slider in Lightroom for some adjustments of course), but you also want a nice spread of the model/set.

Placing the light closer means it will fall off more quickly, moving the light further away will mean it spreads out more over the set.
Because I wanted something special, we placed the light close to the model, and I asked Felisa to lay on the floor for…. well extra “drama”.

Angle of the shot

One of the things I always explain during the workshops is the use of angles.
Not only the angle under which you shoot but also the lens.
When you use a longer lens, it will compress the scene, when you use a wider lens it will exaggerate the perspective.
This is one of the reasons I love the 24-70 f2.8 Sony G-master, it can give me a wide angle and compression effect.
Something I’m using here.

First let’s take a look at the shot straight on.

Nothing wrong with this one.
Love the way Felise poses, and the light spreads out just enough over the set.

But let’s experiment a bit with a different pose, where the model reaches out for the chandelier.

Personally I like this one a bit more.
But it’s still pretty “flat”.
So let’s move a bit too the side and use a slighty wider angle.
In the next shot I did add a small bit off the background because when you shoot under an angle the background was just a bit too short.
Luckily now a days in Photoshop or even Lightroom this is no problem anymore.

Perspective is “everything”

Besides shooting it from a slightly different angle, with a wider angle I also moved the camera slightly more down.
This gives you more of the chandelier, and for me it draws the viewer into the frame much more than the images shot straight from the front.

I think that with a lot of photoshoots we are happy when we see the results and they are great, like the first images.
It took me a few shoots before I started to experiment with different positions and loved the control you have over the contrast, but being able to combine it with a more wide angle shot is opening a lot of creative options. Especially when working with small sets.

Workshops

Want to learn everything about light control?
Want to visit a workshop where it’s not just shooting a model with a fixed lighting setup, but see how the setup is build and adjusted to the taste of the group?
And of course learn how to work with poses, backgrounds, small sets, styling, retouching and a lot more…..

If this all sounds awesome, visit fotografie-workshops.nl and book your workshop.
If you don’t speak Dutch, no problem, let us know a few weeks in advance and we can switch the workshop to English.
Not possible to travel to The Netherlands?
We got you covered with our 1:1 online workshop.
We have a full streaming setup in our studio. 4 detail cameras and of course the retouching software so you can see every detail and of course ask questions during the day. Plus you get all the RAW files after the workshop.

 

It became creepy really fast

/in , /by

It was meant as a Christmas card

But I think when you see the end result you will agree that it’s not perfect for that.

During the workshops some of the sets are “fixed”, but most of the sets can be changed on the spot, and to be honest one of the coolest things for me about the workshops is when the attendees are getting creative. The original idea was our model Felisa on the chair with some nice Christmas lights around her, smiling and being nice and cozy. Well that didn’t happen.

According to the attendees it was much more fun to tie Felisa to the chair in the style of “home alone”, well at least we had that Christmas time captured right 😀
But as a horror fan and because this was shot during the “alternative light” workshop choosing a large softbox to light the whole set was out of the question. During this workshop we are allowed to use ledtubes, but the idea is to use light sources that are not designed for photography.
In this case we did need to light up Felisa’s face.
It would have been easy to use a snoot and for a example a Lume cube, but I wanted something more creative.
So we opted for a small flashlight, the problem was that the flashlight spread out way too much, so just take a piece of cardboard and cut a small stripe in it and use it to focus the light,
The Christmas lights are cool, but they don’t emit a lot of light, so top open up the shadows I’m using a larger Nanlite ledtube set on blue to open up the shadows and just add some extra mood to the shot. You could use a blue gel on a lightbulb but this was easier 😀

Let’s take a look at how it looks as the first setup.

Not bad at all

But what would happen if we add some smoke.
Well the problem is that with a setup like this the smoke will hardly show up, we need some extra light.
And this is where you’re sometimes very lucky.
In the next image you see what happened when we turned on the studio lighting, two spots that we normally have on during the workshops, but turn off when working with continuous lighting because they are pretty bright.

MUCH better

But, at this moment the flashlight was losing some power as you can see in the face, but I still love it and it gave me a bit of an Addams Family vibe.
And that’s the moment I thought “let’s have an exorcism”, and Felisa can scream, so let’s add some extra drama.
Of course we needed some extra effects, so why not use a smoke machine that can blow bubbles that explode when they hit the model.

Now in all honesty, this could have been a lot better, but during a workshop I’m limited in time, sometimes this is frustrating like with images like this, but I still think we got a cool end result.

Angles

And of course, as you know by know.
MOVE around your model, and try different angles.
Although I love the first results, I think the final image, shot from a slightly higher angle, is a great addition to the set.

 

Workshops

Want to learn everything about light control?
Want to visit a workshop where it’s not just shooting a model with a fixed lighting setup, but see how the setup is build and adjusted to the taste of the group?
And of course learn how to work with poses, backgrounds, small sets, styling, retouching and a lot more…..

If this all sounds awesome, visit fotografie-workshops.nl and book your workshop.
If you don’t speak Dutch, no problem, let us know a few weeks in advance and we can switch the workshop to English.
Not possible to travel to The Netherlands?
We got you covered with our 1:1 online workshop.
We have a full streaming setup in our studio. 4 detail cameras and of course the retouching software so you can see every detail and of course ask questions during the day. Plus you get all the RAW files after the workshop.