How'd I Do It, 2

How’d I Do It Part 2

OK gang, if you've read my past blogs then you know that because this is a business I always start with a decent picture first and then we dive into the how to stuff. We just can't have a busted picture at the top of the page now can we? So this is what I was trying to achieve.

This is the goal.

It's a nifty picture but there are some who would tell you it has problems. The first being that hard light I'm using as a rim light. I'd agree that you don't normally want your highest/hottest light on the thing that isn't the main focal point but as I've told you in every how to article so far: Make the picture you want to make. Sometimes you have to forget the rules and do what you feel, and I felt this.

I want to tell you that there is some deeper meaning to this picture and maybe it symbolizes something about the decline of our civilization and blah, blah, blah, but actually I just like taking beautiful pictures of my beautiful partner. As an aside I live in dread of being at a showing and someone asking me to explain what a picture means lol.

So let's talk about how we got there. Let me show you the full set up:

Here is the full setup in our studio, which used to be our two and a half car garage.

I'll walk you through how we set this up and the time invested. The light behind Helen is my key light but it's roughly a quarter stop lower than my fill. It didn't need to be higher because it's hard light and its closer than the fill.

Actually let's define those terms though I'm sure all the photographers know them. Key light or main light is usually used to talk about the main light source of the picture. In this instance the key light is also a rim light as it's pretty much only illuminating the outline of Helen's body. Really just her rear and legs. Fill light is used to add more detail in areas that are darker than you desire them to be.

So back to the how to. That main light is a Profoto B2 sitting on top of a bar stool. It's in a Profoto Magnum reflector. In this photo for the final shot (not the set up shoot) I thought of the front face of that main light as a plane of light and I wanted to line the plane of Helen's hips up with that plane of light. Once that was done she positioned her legs so the light defines them without illuminating her lady business. That part of the set up is super key, that her legs are rimmed well enough that you believe you see them when in reality little of her lower region is revealed.

With that done I went about setting up the front light in a softbox, nice and high. I wanted her face to be visible and her breasts to be private. So I went with a Profoto B2 in a 2x2 softbox.  In order to get the visibility I wanted on this shot where I wanted it I ended up flagging the bottom 1/3 of that softbox. Flagging is using material to block a light source so that you get the light pattern and type you like. In this case I used packing tape and a trash bag. They sell lots of expensive flagging solutions, I own a couple, but trash bags and packing tape are my go tos. Easy to use, always available and you don’t have to treat them kindly.

Setting these two lights and finding the right place and direction for Helen to stand took us roughly 30-40 minutes. And it was late so I broke all the equipment down (I keep a tidy studio) and we marked all the places where everything was. It took us about 10 minutes to get it set up the next morning. Let's not count this time and just leave it with 60 minutes.

One quick note, a large amount of this time was the rope work. To get the ropes taunt without causing discomfort takes some practice. If you attempt this not having experience I’d work up to it. The ties themselves were not super complicated and only took about 10 minutes. And I only took about 4 pictures before the one I wanted, the first one in this post, was in the can. So 70 minutes all in.

Now if you've read a lot of my stuff you know that I say you have to know exactly what you want before you started shooting, and I did. But you also have to be flexible enough to go where the energy of a session takes you. The first picture I showed you is exactly the picture I set out to take, and I personally would say I love it. However it's missing something. Helen's left edge get's lost in the darkness. I thought I could improve that and add a little more color to balance the composition so I popped out a little spot light (my Savage LED color panel) and set it up on the left of Helen (near the window in the setup picture). And we got this:

The final product.

See how much more visual interest and balance that additional light adds? At least to me this feels like it really elevates the picture. So we stopped with less that 30 pictures in the camera. This kind of picture is physically taxing for the model and I don't want to spend a lot of time hunting for another picture when I can let her rest. After all I have a private studio now so I can shoot whenever I like. So I downloaded my 25 pictures to Lightroom picked 4 of them including the setup picture, added edits and variations and ended up with 9 pictures. The pick and edit was less than 2 minutes.. Otherwise everything else you see is exactly as recorded by camera.

So with everything, setup, lighting, break down, download to computer and edit we took about an hour. It was worth it in my opinion.