Please critique this lighting

[elaine marie]

Took this picture of my Grandson with my 2 400w Alienbee

strobes ...one with a shoot through umbrella and one with a bounce

umbrella. Please give me any suggestions on improving the lighting.

Thank you Elaine<div></div>

[ivan_dzo]

I think the frontal lighting is lovely. Soft and just right for the subject. The problem to my eye is that he merges into the background especially on his right side. You would do well to have a hair light and/or a kicker light to pick him out from the background. Even a reflector would do if you're short of extra strobes. Great pictures by the way!

[brooks short]

Elaine,

 

As Ivan said, a fill card/reflector and/or a hair light would help seperate the subject from the background.

 

Speaking of backgrounds, if you are going to use a black background, you should position it farther behind the subject so that it is truly black. As it is, the fabric of your black background is visible.

 

But, for me, a black bkgd. is as boring if not more boring than a white bkgd. I'd rather see a bit of tone and some light on the background. By putting a splash or slash or glow of light behind the subject you can draw emphasis to the subject and create a sense of motion and an interplay of light against dark tones.

 

Here's a shot with a large 5' softbox as the key light. A fill reflector, soft box hairlight and a 12" fresnel spot on the background.

 

For me, this kind of background treatment is more entertaining than a pure black or pure white background.<div></div>

[conraderb]

Brooks - this question will certainly demonstrate my lack of knowledge about photoshop or lighting effects, but how in the world did you get that glowing look in your image?

 

thanks.

 

conrad

[jmf]

Brooks, what color was the background in your shot? I've read a pretty good discussion that a mottled grey is a near perfect background (assuming you don't want scenics). Blast it with enough light, and it's white, underlight it, and it's black, hit it with gel'ed lights and it's whatever color you want. What's your opinion?

 

thanks

jim

[brooks short]

Conrad,

 

The glow in that shot was made with a gaussian blur on one layer, a layer mask between that layer and a sharp layer and then airbrushing between the two layers to reveal the sharp layer. A Photoshop version of the kind of split diffusion you might get with a Turbo-Filter. With the airbrush set to a small percentage of flow, such as 20%, each stroke of the brush only removes 20% of the blur so you can have varying amounts of blur and sharpness in areas of your choosing.

 

Jim,

 

Yes, a mottled grey background is a very good choice for the reasons you mentioned. In this example the background was a mottled grey/blue color. I often like a soft blue color bkgd. for portraits because a cool color like blue recedes while the warmer colors of the person's complexion come forward. It seems to add a bit of a 3rd dimension when the bkgd's lit seperately.

 

Of course the color of the bkgd. doesn't matter much in this duotone.

 

One of the more effective techniques in this shot, I think, is the extremely low point of view. The camera was only about 2 ft above the ground and the long lens, which was a 250mm on a 35mm square digital capture.

 

BTW, exposure was 100ISO at f16 with about 3200 ws of strobe.

[jonathan_brewer1]

Great points in the above threads, background color/tone has quite a bit of an effect separation wise on your foreground subject matter, here's a head shot Elaine, of a client and good friend of mine, Dayna, originally shot in B&W w/a 'Thunder Grey' background, and then converted to a 'duotone'.

 

A 'kicker'/hairlight was not used for separation, since we were both satisfied w/the shot without one.<div></div>

[jonathan_brewer1]

'Chairascuro' is a term common for an effect you see in paintings, it means rougly 'light and dark' or at least this is how I've know it, it refers to the separation between the foreground and background in a painting(or any other visual art) by contrasting the lightness of one right next to the darkness of another.

 

Cinematographers picked up on this early and incorporated this into their lighting schemes, which is the idea behind using a kicker/hairlight, emphasizing an edge w/light to separate that edge belonging to the foreground from the background.

 

What is not common however is the idea that you can do this in reverse, which is also found in paintings, and which is also within the concept of 'Chairascuro', which is that you can get separation by having a lighter background and darker areas on your foreground subject matter,.............................if you look at my shot of Dayna, a lighter background contrasts w/her hair, and the shadow detail in the area of her cheeks, and particularly her neck,..................thus either way works.....................emphasis w/light of the edges of a foreground subject against a darker background,...............OR..............darker edges around a foreground subject w/a lighter background.

 

BOTH involve the concept of 'Chariascuro'..............contrasting the EDGE of something by emphasis w/light, or the lack of it, and thereby getting separation between that something something in the foreground and somehting in the background.

 

I know you asked about this in an earlier thread and I hope it gives you a sense of WHY regarding the use of a hairlight.

 

Good luck.

 

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