POTD 4 of 365

Perhaps it's because I just read Stephen King's "The Library Policeman", or perhaps it's because The Missus revels in her Librarian-ness, but, today's shot makes use of deliberately threatening lighting.

Remember when you were a kid, and you held a flashlight under your chin to tell ghost stories?  Yeah, neither do I, because nobody did that.  Remember when you were a kid, and you saw somebody on TV holding a flashlight under his chin to tell ghost stories?  Right.  This is kind of like that.



This was a really easy shot, and, frankly, more time could have been spent to minimize the shadows from the book, but, when The Missus consents to modeling, one does not waste any time.

This is, so far, the most post-processing I've done on a shot for this project.  The first three were tweaked in a bit in Digital Photo Pro (sharpening, lens correction, contrast), converted to JPG, and posted.

I took this into Photoshop for a tiny bit of high-pass punch.

This is is the non-shopped version:



Finally, the setup:



Looks much less threatening there, doesn't she?  Proof positive that lighting is wonderful for setting the mood of a shot. Well, that, and deliberately keeping the fuzzy slippers out of the frame.

What we've got here are two flashes, triggered with the cheapies.

The 580EX at 1/64 with a Strobies Honeycomb Diffuser is positioned at camera right, below The Missus, angled up toward her face.

The 430EZ is at 1/16 and has a Roscoe Purple Gel on it, and is on the floor behind The Missus, to light the backdrop.

POTD 2 of 365

Originally posted on Flickr on 1/2/11



Pig Noir

I'm a huge fan of hard light - give me a film noir styled movie, and I'll watch it, even if the acting and/or plot are terrible, just because I find the lighting techniques so visually appealing.

That in mind, I set out to emulate that style in the studio. I'll let you judge whether or not I accomplished it.

First off, the pig needed a fedora. I believe it's a law that hard light + fedora = film noir. As I'm also a fan of hats, finding a fedora in my box o' hats wasn't difficult.

Now, the light.

At camera left, above the pig, angled down, is a 580EX II with a Strobies Barndoor attachment. It's slitted horizontally to throw a light across the eyes.

At camera right, above the pig, angled down, is a 160 watt-second Cowboy Studio strobe, set to about 1/8 power. This is just for a little fill.

Behind the pig is a 430EZ, aimed at the backdrop somewhere in the vicinity of where the fedora is going be positioned in the picture. It's set to about 1/32, and should provide some background separation.

If all that's too many words, perhaps this will help:



This was a fun shoot, and I will most likely be revisiting Pig Noir in the future. I'd like to try to work some blinds in there.