My wife suggested “Tricky Tuesday” as a way to share some of the different tricks, tips and techniques I’ve used over the years when shooting glamour images in my home studio. Here’s something that follows up from last Tuesday’s post that was about soft boxes and umbrellas.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
In modeling, I had to learn to like myself, to love myself, to feel comfortable.— Mariacarla Boscono
Because softboxes were designed to emulate the soft, directional lighting that’s produced by window light they are often rectangular in shape but they don’t have to be. They can have a shape that’s different than a traditional window, such as emulating stage footlights and these long, thin narrow lightbanks are typically called striplights.
Striplights can be used to create dramatic portrait lighting but because of the narrow light that’s projected onto your subject the most important part of that subject is properly illuminated. A Striplight can also be used as a background light and when placed horizontally can be used to emulate the effect of a horizon after sunset. Like everything else in portrait lighting, determining what’s really important is ultimately up to you.
Softboxes can also be octagonal like the Plume Wafer Hexoval softbox that I often use in my studio. Octagonal softboxes produce a large, direct yet wraparound light source with an even light spread.
As an affordable alternative, one classic umbrella lighting techniques is to use a white umbrella in shoot-through mode and fire the flash directly though the fabric. Because the flash is not enclosed, as it is in a softbox, some of its output is lost. Umbrellas are not so much “octa” because they typically have 16-ribs, so the light quality is not quite the same and some directionality is lost as well as light spills out the open sides. Nevertheless in some applications, as in the featured portrait, using an umbrella in shoot-through mode might be better than using it in the traditional (bounce) orientation. And umbrellas, like Westcott’s 45-inch Optical White Satin Diffusion are downright affordable at $25.90.
How I made this portrait: Today’s featured image is from the first portrait session I had with Pam Simpson during a time when I was shooting a series of images of models wearing corsets. (Use the search function to find all of the images in this series.) This portraot was made using a single monolight with a 40-inch white umbrella that was mounted in shoot-through mode and placed at camera right with a 32-inch reflector at left used for fill. The background was one of Silverlake Photo Accessories’ Colorsmacks backdrops that was clamped to JTL background stands.
The camera used was a Canon EOS 5D Mark I with EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM lens (at 56mm) and an exposure of 1/125 sec at f/14 and ISO 100. After retouching with Imagenomics’ Portraiture the mage was processed with the Color Efex plug-in.
My book, Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography, is full of tips, tools and techniques for glamour and boudoir photography and includes information on the cameras and lenses used as well as the complete exposure data for each image. New copies are available from Amazon for $25.86 with used copies starting around ten bucks as I write this. The Kindle version is $19.99 for those preferring a digital forma