Jessica

[plugone]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v512/plugone/jessica-web-4679.jpg

hi everyone, this is my first post. i've been reading the forums for awhile but i haven't had anything worthwhile to post until now. i work mostly as a cinematographer and gaffer, and i shoot stills for leisure. but this year i decided i would try to build my still portfolio.

anyway, i was shooting an industrial last week for a hair extension product and at the end of the 2nd day i shot some stills of the model after we had wrapped the video portion of the shoot. she was very professional and fun to work with. i usually work with actors, so it was a new experience to work with a model who knew how to pose for the camera. this shot was lit with continuous tungsten lights and taken with the 50/1.4.

i hope to start posting more shots, but i haven't had the time to book a TFP shoot with any models. hopefully jessica will like these shots and do a freebie for me since she's with an agency.

[Maureen Souza]

Welcome to the forum...beautiful job on the photo. Looking forward to seeing more.

[Jim G]

Wow! Awesome first post! I like the lighting (and the background effect) and the post works well for me.

You're off to a good start here if that's your first post :p

[plugone]

thanks for the warm welcome jim and maureen. this is one of the forums i visit regularly because everyone is so helpful and supportive.

we actually shot the video in a photography studio, so i chose the brown seamless for day 2. my gaffer was a little surprised since he thought we would be lighting the whole background to the same stop as the key, like we did on day 1 with the white seamless. i asked him to place a 300w fresnel on a couple apple boxes on the floor to create the spotlight effect on the background paper. it's a trick i use to break up an otherwise boring background. it worked okay, but you can still see the texture of the paper which sort of bothers me.

[grego]

Defintely a great first photo. from the LA area. Awesome. :) Love how the light leads up to her.

[adam*]

Great shot, good luck with getting her to pose for more shots.

[greg76]

wow!! what lens did u use..

[PEACHMAN]

Great lighting and lovely model...real nice capture..! Welcome aboard!!

[Rhinotherunt]

Very nice...

[In2Photos]

...it worked okay, but you can still see the texture of the paper which sort of bothers me.

It shouldn't. It looks great. Very nice shot, thank you for posting it. Can't wait to see more.

[Kevin]

Looks like you've raised the bar on first posts Kris, super shot. Welcome to the forum and lets see more.

[plugone]

thanks everyone for the kind words. these forums really helped me build my new kit after i sold my 10D and lenses.

[Chudilo]

Great shot. Love the hair.
I'm looking at the highlights and they have aslight Pink tint to them.
Were you using a pink reflector or is it due to post processing /jpg compression?
Are you using a an LCD monitor and correcting for the blueish tint of the monitor?

[plugone]

it could be a number of things. it could actually be her skin tone, since she is very fair, and her skin does have a slight pink tint to it. i also did some levels adjustment, and the pink tint may be a result of trying to get rid of some of the green cast in her hair. it could also be the fill light i used, a dimmable kino flo, which has a tendency to go towards the magenta side as it is dimmed down. or it could be all of these things combined.

[plugone]

oh yeah, duh, i am correcting on an LCD monitor. i should probably calibrate this thing now...




ugh...i just went through my color profiles and i see the pink you're talking about. will it help if i start shooting AdobeRGB and then set my monitor to AdobeRGB? i remember reading a post about this, i should probably search for it

[Smooth1]

Nice work on this one. Definitely looking forward to seeing more in the future.

[KaplanMultimedia]

When you mentioned it was lit with continuous tungsten lighting, I knew you were probably a videographer. I also have a lot of tungsten lighting equipment. It comes in very handy for creative light control that you see instantly because it's always on.

Excellent shot and a beautiful model. I look forward to more posts from you. :D

[24Peter]

Awesome shot! What did you use for your key light? Actually, what was your full setup light-wise?

[plugone]

thanks guys. yeah, i love my tungsten lights, but i'm starting to experiment with my speedlites after seeing some of the amazing strobe work on this board.

as for the lighting set-up:
i keyed her with a 1K in a medium softbox. this was placed to the left of camera at about 45 degrees and just slightly above her head tilted down. we cut it off the background with a 2x3 solid on the left side of the softbox. the fill came from a kino-flo diva right below the lens and was dimmed to taste. we flew in a 2x3 double to knock down the fill on her chest and arms, but keep it on her face. i think we had opal on the kino to soften it up a little more, as well. there were (2) 650w fresnel backlights behind her to the left and right, high up on stands hitting her hair. we had 1/2 CTO and opal on the barndoors to soften and warm-up the backlights. and last was the 300w fresnel on a beaver board and 2 full apples to hit the background. we used it without the barndoors to create the soft spotlight effect and spotted it in until we liked the shape we were getting. i think we also dropped a single scrim, maybe a double to knock it down a bit.

EXIF Summary: 1/100s f/2.8 ISO200 50mm

i think i might have some pictures of the set-up, to get a better idea.

this gives you an idea of where the key was coming from and you can see the 300w on the appleboxes hitting our background. the kino is in the upper right in this shot, but was later moved right below the lens for the shot that i posted.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v512/plugone/IMG_4494web.jpg

now the kino is in position below the lens. i'm dimming the kino down while watching the shot on the monitor. in the upper right you can see the 650w backlight with the CTO and opal on it.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v512/plugone/IMG_4512web.jpg

here i am setting the 2x3 double with the open end up. it allowed me to cut the fill on her torso while keeping the level i wanted on her face.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v512/plugone/IMG_4517web.jpg

and finally, you can see the flag that is cutting the spill from the softbox off the background. the other thing i noticed in this shot is that you can see the effect of the warm backlight hitting the back of my gaffer's head.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v512/plugone/IMG_4621web.jpg

[mgbeach]

quite the setup, and I can't wait to see more of your stuff man! Best of luck with getting her to do some TFP. Can't ask for much better.

The only nitpicking thing I have, and it was probably beyond your control, is the difference in tone between her face and the rest of her skin. Was she still made up from the video shoot? It just looks a bit like a mask when juxtaposed with her whiter neck.

I'm sure you can even that out in photoshop. I may be seeing things too. I haven't slept in 36 hours.

edit...seeing as how I'm battling insomnia, and you have the image editing ok selected, I took a go at correcting what I was talking about. First, added a duplicate background layer on Overlay mode at 25% opacity. Added a masked a hue/sat layer on her face at -3/-9/+8. Added a local curves layer on the eyes to bring them up a bit. Added an overall levels layer with inputs of 9/1.38/250. Added a curves layer, slight "s" curve for overall contrast enhancement, added a CS2 warming photo filter layer at 35%, and a final fine-tuning levels layer at inputs of 17/1.17/255. A little Unsharp Mask to finish it off.

I tend to go for images that are a little more high contrast, and it may not be your thing at all.

Truly, can't wait to see more of her and whatever else you can come up with. You very obviously are a craftsman when it comes to lighting, and I know you will lend a lot of knowledge to the board!

[plugone]

good eye, michael. you're definitely right about the different tone on her face. i'm pretty sure that's from the make-up she had on. when she stepped in the light for the first shot of the day, i actually asked the make-up artist to take down the blush on her cheeks because it was really heavy and didn't look good on camera. thanks for pointing that out, i'll work on it in photoshop.