hollywood style portrait

[MJS]

Just getting ready to shoot our senior dancers for their portraits. We decided to go with the 40s and 50s style of hollywood head shots. The folowing was part of a test series, Single light camera left, 45 degrees up and left of subject, straight reflector, no modification. 42 inch silver reflector camera rt for fill. Gridded strobe on boom to shoot hair and shoulders. Main and hair lights at f/5.6. It's an antique white background, forgot the normal back and hairlight strobes, so switched up the normal fill light to hair.. I usually like a dark to light gradient on the BG. Subject 6 ft off the BG.

[MB1]

I'm thinking the hand in the ear is distracting and twists her heat a bit oddly. All that set up work sure resulted in great eyes and hair though.

[MJS]

Thanks, the hand will be gone when we go for the actual shoot. The set up was done to teach lighting in one of my advanced media classes.

[GB1]

The contrast is good though I think the left side of her face (from my view) is too bright. I also agree that the hand doesn't help with this particular angle: she looks uncomfortable like that. Did you purposely soften it? It does not seem "sharp", though it isn't bad. I like the hair, but not the way the bottom hair is fading away: try a deeper DOF. Her eyes are dominant here.

GB

[MJS]

thanks GB!, I agree with the focus on the eyes. I went to f/8 on the following. School is out while I sit here in my studio/classroom waiting for my son to call so I can pick him up at the movies with his friends. I ramped up the hairlight a bit and stuck an SB800 with a lumiquest diffuser mounted, on the floor, pointing at the BG. Half power manual remote mode, it acts like a normal slave sensor when you select SU4 in the menu. autofocused on the eyes. Alex the security guard was kind enough to stop buy on his rounds and be the guinea pig.

[GB1]

I think the f8 aperature worked better. The lighting is good for security guard model subject because it isn't too perfect - you would not want that for such a portrait. But if taking shots of women you would probably want to use a second light on the side to fill in the shaded side of his face.

I also have some studio lighting - ain't used it in years I only have one strobe so I also get some dramatic lighting if I angle the strobe at too sharp an angle from the front. Reflectors are hard to use. Another solution is to set it all up close to a window and shoot in the daytime, letting the window act as a second light (American ingenuity trumps all).

GB