Today’s Post by Joe Farace
I didn’t know I was doing film noir, I thought they were detective stories with low lighting!–Marie Windsor
Film Noir is a cinematic style and movement that is centered around 1940’s and 1950’s American crime movies that express a cynical, pessimistic worldview and a shadowy visual aesthetic. It’s look is characterized by low-key lighting, harsh black-and-white contrast and deep shadows. It was something I was attempting to create during this session with Pam Simpson by one using one light and a strip light soft box at that!
Regular readers of this blog know = I’m a fan of monolights and for this shoot with Pam I used a single Flashpoint monolight with a Westcott Apollo strip light. This monolight was a compact battery powered 180 Watt-second monolight designed for both studio on-location use.
Film Noir Style
How I made this portrait: This portrait of Ms. Simpson was made in my 11×15 foot home studio. As you can see in the above right) lighting setup shot, a 12×36-inch Westcott Strip Softbox with silver interior was attached to the Flashpoint monolight using a Bowens compatible speed ring and mounted on the monolight. The soft box is placed at camera left as you can see in the setup photo at right.
In the above setup shot, it shows how I placed a 32-inch-point reflector but during the session I moved it in and out of the shots I was making to create a more dramatic look. A Savage 5 x 7-foot Infinity grey vinyl background was hung on JTL background stands and it photographed darker due to the directionality of the Westcott Strip Soft box not allowing much light, but a few shadows, to fall on the backdrop.
For the featured shot above left, no reflector was used allowing the Strip Softbox to produce a more theatrical look. The camera used was a Panasonic Lumix G5 (before it was converted to infrared duty) and the versatile Olympus 45mm f/1.8 lens. The exposure was 1/125 sec at f/8 and ISO 200. After light retouching, the image file was converted to monochrome using Silver Efex with the Color Efex Glamour Glow filter was added to produce a classic Hollywood glamour look.
If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to buy Joe a cup of Earl Grey tea ($3.50), click here. And if you do, thanks so much.
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. New copies are available from Amazon for $45.08. with used copies selling for around forty-three bucks as I write this. The Kindle version is $19.99 for those preferring a digital format.