Hollywood lighting little quizzzz

[Irakly Shanidze]

They say that it is lost art, nobody does it anymore, blah-blah-blah... I do it all the time
Your job is to figure out how the lights were set. Good luck!
http://galleries.lfi-online.com/albu...0/L1171275.jpg

[MJS]

one light left, straight with no softener 90 degrees to subject and a very small gridded spot or fresnel on opposite hand down low. Very cool shot by the way, I love the look. I haven't done one like this in a long time.

[BLS439]

one light left above model's eye angled down and slightly behind model.

one snooted light or narrow grid spot low right on models hand (it's possibly a reflector)

one light left for background if the spill is not caused by the first light

[Irakly Shanidze]

oh, i forgot to mention... three lights only, including the background. and it is not only where the lights are...

[MJS]

Are you still doing the lighting seminars? Any chance of one in the Miami area?

[Irakly Shanidze]

Are you still doing the lighting seminars? Any chance of one in the Miami area?

yes, i am teaching two workshops on the west coast in january: in san francisco and then in seattle. miami... have not thought about it... i do not have a support structure in miami. but it is certainly doable.

as for the picture... aside from the background light, there are two more active light sources, and none of them is on the left :P

[BLS439]

as for the picture... aside from the background light, there are two more active light sources, and none of them is on the left :P

Who's left the models or camera?

Cause that's a lot of light to be bounced back through the smoke and on to the model from the right, unless its from a mirror or something.

[Irakly Shanidze]

Who's left the models or camera?

Cause that's a lot of light to be bounced back through the smoke and on to the model from the right, unless its from a mirror or something.

when you talk about lighting or composition, you always are supposed to refer to the camera side.
good thinking, it is a mirror. what about the hand?

[BLS439]

when you talk about lighting or composition, you always are supposed to refer to the camera side.
good thinking, it is a mirror. what about the hand?

I knew that but I wanted to make sure we were on the same page.

Well, the light is very warm compared the light bounced back from the mirror. The light based upon the shadows on the top of the hand and between the fingers, it appears the source is low and camera right. Based upon the warmth, I would say it's been gelled (CTO, maybe) due to the narrow throw I would say it's got a narrow grid on it or a snoot.

However, another idea I had was a flashlight lighting her hand. Her arms are a bit ghosted causing me to think the shutter speed was slow and the model had slight movement. The strobe into the mirror caused the majority of the image to be frozen. I'm guessing maybe the hand was painted in, although that would be a bit unorthodox.

[Irakly Shanidze]

Right, the strobe froze the face. The trick was that a background was lit by a halogen light, so at 1/15th of a second hands against the background came out with lots of motion blur.
Now, the hand... It's a 3x3' softbox gradiented by a 2-stop translucent fabric. A flashlight would not give light of such a soft quality, and a direct softbox would give too much spill. The warmth of light on the hand is due to three layers of nylon before the strobe (compared to none in the projection spot - mirror). Each layer of even the whitest nylon eats away about 200K of color temperature.

Irakly

I knew that but I wanted to make sure we were on the same page.

Well, the light is very warm compared the light bounced back from the mirror. The light based upon the shadows on the top of the hand and between the fingers, it appears the source is low and camera right. Based upon the warmth, I would say it's been gelled (CTO, maybe) due to the narrow throw I would say it's got a narrow grid on it or a snoot.

However, another idea I had was a flashlight lighting her hand. Her arms are a bit ghosted causing me to think the shutter speed was slow and the model had slight movement. The strobe into the mirror caused the majority of the image to be frozen. I'm guessing maybe the hand was painted in, although that would be a bit unorthodox.

[BLS439]

Wow. That was great. Thanks!