Inexperienced, short notice mens fashion shoot, working with 2x speedlites

[george_kaplan4]

<p>I am relatively inexperienced with studio lighting. That said someone needs me for a photoshoot tomorrow (short notice, yikes) and i am borrowing a friends speedlites. I have 2 580 ex ii's with no modifiers and no access to any...<br>

here is 3 example pics of the lighting i need to pull off:<br>

http://imgur.com/TXAh5I1,8COJzF9,WkwsNUe#0<br>

i can't tell but seems like a lot of these are only using one light? I have a canon 6d with 50mm 1.2 ill be using for this shoot, and pocket wizard plus 3's to trigger the speedlites... i have light stands as well. <br>

im honestly pretty lost and it seems from the few tests i did that it is really hard to get good lighting like this without some sort of modifier - the light seems really hard to keep soft, and yet at the same time really hard to direct properly.<br>

the pictures are supposed to accentuate the hairstyle. it is for a mens hair / barbering competition. could someone give me a bread 'n' butter lighting setup that would work for this stuff involving 2 off-camera speedlites? or any general advice on not using modifiers, or some really cheap / really simple DIY modifiers i could make tomorrow before the shoot?<br>

sorry for an in depth thread basically begging for help but i am very lost when it comes to studio lighting of any kind, and the lack of modifiers doesnt exactly make this easy either :( I am freaking out and having a hard time producing results remotely close to what it appears competitors will be producing.<br>

Thanks<br>

-George</p>

[devon_mccarroll]

George, I think you've answered your own question--you don't have the experience or the equipment to do this. For white backgrounds,

you need a lot of light, meaning at least two studio monolights to get pure white. The example images also indicate a hair light being

used, which is essential if this is to feature hairstyles, plus a main light, and a reflector or possibly a fill light as well. Plain and simple, you aren't going to be able to do this without the proper equipment and experience. Is there a reason they're asking you to do this? Did you make it clear that you aren't set up to handle the job at this time?

[garypeck]

<p>Devon's absolutely right! They always beg you to do it when they're in a jam and then scream when it fails to reach expectations. Experience would tell you what you need to do this and how to accomplish the project. Without those skills you'll probably fail - and the client won't understand anything except you failed.</p>

<p>"Bad planning on your part, does not represent an emergency on my part" Just say no.</p>

[george_kaplan4]

<p>No genuinely isn't an answer in this situation. I get that this reply defies pretty much any logic and you guys gave me very good logic, and youre right, but i need to do this and make the best of this.</p>

[Bill C]

<blockquote>

<p>... but i need to do this and make the best of this.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Just for the record, I agree that you're not prepared for this, and it would be better for a more experienced (and better equipped) shooter to handle it.</p>

<p>That aside, here's a quick rundown on the samples you linked to. First, the lighting on those is not a "hard" source, as your "speedlites" will be. Nor is the lighting very soft. To gage this, have a look at the shadows under the subject's nose. With a hard light (such as direct sunlight), these shadows would have crisp edges. And if the light was very soft (such as an overcast day), the shadow would be mostly undefined. So this lighting is somewhere between the two.</p>

<p>I would guess that the main light is using a relatively small light modifier, perhaps what they call a "beauty dish" or a small softbox from perhaps 4 or 5 ft away. You said that you don't have any "modifiers" available to you, so here's a crude substitute: rig up a fixture to hold one of your speedlites about a foot away from a (nominal) 8x10 inch white card, which is angled slightly away. The light bouncing off the card can be used as your main light (the reason to angle it away is so your speedlite is not between it and the subject). So however you originally planned to hold the speedlite(s), perhaps the same method can be used to hold the "reflector jig." I'd probably use the speedlite in "manual" mode, setting it by trial an error, although there are other ways to do it.</p>

<p>I think your second speedlite needs to be a hairlight, using a rig similar to to the main. (If you try to use the speedlite direct, you won't get the "silky" look in the samples; there will be a harsher look to the hair.)</p>

<p>This leaves you with no fill light, and no background light. So without other lights, you absolutely cannot get a white background. But since you said it's for a hair/barbering competition, I think that the hair light is more crucial. You could use a larger white card, say 1x2 feet, or 2x2 feet, as a reflector to fill in the dark side of the face a bit.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>i can't tell but seems like a lot of these are only using one light?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I'd say probably 4 or more. There's a main, likely a fill (it might simply be reflected light in the camera room acting as a weak fill), a hair light, a background light (or two), and possibly a low power "kicker" light (in some shots the subject's cheek or jaw line is lightly accented from behind).</p>

<p>P.S. Two other alternatives - if you can shoot in a dark room, you could use a long exposure, say 15 seconds, using multiple low-power flashes from a handheld speedlite to "paint" with light. You'd need some sort of fixed "rest" behind the subject's head to help him stay perfectly still. The other alternative is to pick up a couple of cheap continuous lights, such as those clamp-on lights from the hardware store. Normally you'd have to worry about matching the color to your flash units, but since the samples are B&W, this won't be very important.</p>

[peter_simpson1]

<p>For the white card -- foamcore. We use it by the truckload and I've seen it used for everything from walls to light reflectors. Any art supply place will have it</p>

[midgley]

<p>How did it go?</p>