My Sunday Series of posts about available light portraiture is on hold today and we go into the studio to celebrate National Bikini Day featuring the one, the only Erin Valakari.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
This bikini made me a success.–Ursula Andress
National Bikini Day dives into summer fun every July 5. Named after the Bikini Atoll, where the United States conducted atomic tests, the two-piece bathing suit made its debut in Paris. French designer Jacques Heim wanted to name the swimsuit’s revealing bits of fabric “atom,” but in 1946, designer Louis Réard named his piece “bikini” and the word stuck. Today, the bikini comes in all kind of shapes, sizes, colors, and fabrics. Over the years, designers have expanded the style to flatter more body shapes, enticing more women to wear the fashion.
Erin in a Teeny-Weeny Bikini
But first some background. You would think that a photographer who shoots glamour photography would have lots of photographs of women wearing bikinis and when I did a search of my computer I found 14 folders containing images containing the word “bikini.” So far so good but when I went looking for what I considered to be good photographs of models wearing bikinis the list shrank dramatically.
First, there were a bunch I’d made of different models for a calendar shoot but I thought the backgrounds were too specific for this kind of post and not a good fit for celebrating this occasion. Next, there were a couple that could only be featured in one of my Password Protected posts for obvious reasons. Maybe, just maybe I’ll use them in a post for my Patreon members. Finally, there was a whole series, including two that I made with the model wearing micro bikinis but I was clearly out of my depth when photographing these two women, even though I had worked with each of them before. This left me with two sets of images of Erin Valakari with her wearing a different black bikini in both sessions. Today’s featured image is from the second session.
How I Made this Photograph: I photographed Erin using a Panasonic Lumix GH4 with a Lumix G Vario 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 lens (at 45mm.) At some point in putting together my home studio, this camera lens combination became my go-to setup and shooting in RAW+JPEG (more in next paragraph) usually produced sharp images, even though some readers may not be impressed with the camera’s 16-megapixel sensor (17.3x13mm.) It doesn’t bother me. The exposure was 1/100 sec at f/8.0 and ISO 200.
This image was made in RAW+JPEG mode with the Photo Style set in monochrome. This setting produces two files: One black and white JPEG and one color RAW file. As I discussed in my post Creating Glamour Photographs in Black and White, I was really surprised by the image quality of the JPEG file when compared to the RAW file. So presented here again to further drag this topic out–I hope to talk about it with Barry Staver in our next Pixels, Grain & Cookies podcast–is the black and white JPEG (above right.) Please note that the JPEG file is not an SOOC shot. Each enhancement that I made to the RAW was duplicated on the monochrome JPEG to enable a fair comparison.
Lighting for the portrait was provided by a blue Paul C. Buff DigiBee 800 monolight with Plume Ltd Wafer softbox attached and used as the main light. It was placed at camera right. An AlienBees 800 monolight with a 16 x 30-inch Westcott Apollo Strip soft box was located at camera left with another (red) DigiBee 800 with a 48-inch Dynalite Quad Square black/silver umbrella placed in the back far left corner of the studio space. The background was Silverlake Photo Accessories’ Carbonite muslin backdrop that was suspended from JTL background stands. Paul C Buff is not a sponsor of me or this blog. I do not get a single penny from you clicking those links; they are provided just for your convenience.
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My book Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography is full of tips, tools and techniques for glamour and boudoir photography and includes information on all of the cameras used as well as the complete exposure data for each image. Used copies are available from Amazon for $33.65. as I write this. The Kindle version is $19.99 for those preferring a digital forma