Recently, my wife and I were having lunch and I told her I was having trouble coming up with a new theme for Tuesday’s blog posts and she suggested “Tricky Tuesday” as a way to share some of the different tricks, tips and techniques I’ve used over the years when shooting portrait and glamour images in the studio. Here’s another try at this new theme…
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
When I go into the studio, I completely detach. I let my emotions come out.—Sade Adu
A monolight is a self-contained studio flash, that can be powered by AC or DC battery power and like any studio light allows the fitting of light modifiers, such as reflectors, umbrellas or soft boxes. Within a single, often compact housing, a monolight contains a power source, modeling light, flash tube and controls.
A monolight’s controls typically let you change its output from full, half, quarter and sometimes 1/32’nd power, either in stepped increments or as continuously variable output. One of a monolight’s most useful features is a modeling light that lets you preview what the flash looks like on your subject and whose output can be varied to match the output power setting, full power or simply turned off.
Over the years I’ve tested many different monolight systems but when it came time to put up my own money—Mary bought one of these lights for me as a birthday present—I chose DigiBee and Alien Bees monolights from Paul C Buff because of their combination of power, flexibility and low price. A long time ago I had a chance to talk with the late Mr. Buff about monolight design and was impressed with his design concepts. My experiences with his equipment over the years bore out his philosophy of innovative design and multiple capabilities wrapped up in an affordable package. This is not a sponsored statement, it’s just my experience with these lights.
How I Made This Portrait
One of my guiding principles in photographing models is that I want them to be comfortable during the shoot. Some models project a sexy vibe and this shows in the wardrobe they choose to wear and the poses they come up with, with some models often have their own unique style.
I was fortunate to photograph Scarlet Ana twice. During our last session together, the lighting setup for this portrait consisted of two Paul C Buff DigiBee DB800’s monolights and one Alien Bee B800 monolight. One DigiBee DB800 was placed at camera right and was fairly close to Scarlet. It had a 37x27x12inch Plume Ltd. Wafer soft box attached. An Alien Bee B800 with an 16 x 30-inch Westcott Apollo Strip (40 x 76cm) soft box mounted was located at camera left. Another DigiBee DB800 with a Paul C Buff 18-OMNI Reflector attached, softened by a triple-layer Diffusion Sock, was located at camera left and placed near the back corner of my home studio.
The camera used was a Panasonic Lumix GH4 with a Lumix G Vario 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 lens (at 23mm) with an exposure of 1/125 sec at f/11 and ISO 200. The background was a hand painted Carbonite muslin from Silverlake Photo Accessories. The RAW file had the Bi-Color filter from Color Efex applied to add some drama and was finished off with the Glamour Glow filters from Color Efex.
Note for my Patreon Subscribers. After looking at all of the images in this series, I noticed that I might be able make a nice Bonus post out of some of them for one of my uncensored Password Protected posts. If you are interested in seeing some of those images, click CONTACT and let me know. If you are not yet a Patreon subscriber—it’s surprisingly inexpensive—details on how to sign up can be found here.