Back in the studio this week with three separate sittings. I decided
to alter my high key lighting set up again as I felt I could have done
better with the shots from the previous session. Post processing those
images had involved a lot of work in photoshop to make up for some not
quite white floor and background areas and a bit more shade on the fill
side than I liked.
For this session I decided to move my background lights, two Bowens
500′s fitted with ‘High Performance’ reflectors, closer to the
background but still crossing each other with light to the edge of the
background opposite the each light. I decided to stick with my large
Bowens softbox as my key light, set at forty five degrees to the sitter
but feathered across from the right. I had been using a second fill
light straight onto the sitter in the last session but I decided to move
that light and position it at more of an angle opposite the fill. I
decided to change from a shoot through umbrella and use another softbox
with this light set one stop below the key and set further back. In
camera test shots looked ok but I find these are not always a great
indicator with the high key setup.
My first session was with a young family, Mum, Dad, one cooperative
five year old and a tearful eighteen month old girl. Despite my best
efforts I couldn’t coax one smile from her but that’s all good
experience and I did get some nice serious looking shots by getting Dad
to swing her round into camera from over his shoulder. Travis was the
complete opposite and more than happy to pose in any way I asked and
even had a few ideas of his own.
More than happy with some nice shots in the bag I moved onto the next
session with one year old Reuben. What a nightmare. Forget posing marks
on the floor, the studio was one big adventure playground as far as
Reuben was concerned and he wasn’t going to hang around for me. We tried
hard and eventually came away with some nice crawling shots and a
couple of him stuck between Dads legs. Plonking him into a chair for a
few shots also worked until he sussed out how to climb down and get away
again. A good experience again although I’ve no idea what I could do
different next time.
For the final session I changed the lighting as I’d asked my niece to
come in with a Michael Jackson fancy dress outfit she’d worn to a
family party the week before. I wanted an excuse to use my beauty dish
and a hair light so we experimented with a few setups and poses. There’s
more work to do on this one but I was quite pleased with a couple of
the efforts. For the background I used my white colorama paper but
turned off the rear lights. This worked well and gave a nice mid grey
effect in the final image.
Post processed I was more happy with the new light set up for the
high key stuff. Personally I like my high key work to be exactly that,
very white, light and slightly bleached. I might tweak the back light
setting again next time but I think I’ll stick with my key and fill
light setup. Using a couple of the Kubota actions lifted the contrast
and colours and my 20% Gaussian blur/light channel sharpen action
finished them off nicely.
