Question about lighting people with white hair?

[incendy]

I find my grandma particularily difficult to photograph. She is a great model, but is 92 years old so her face has quite a few wrinkles and her hair is white and seems to get blown out really easily. I was told butterfly lighting with strong fill would lessen the wrinkles, but I was curious if anyone had any suggestions about the hair so I can keep a good exposure of her face without blowing it out:) Thank you in advance!!

[LightingMan]

Dear Incendy
There is nothing difficult about photographing an elderly lady but in order to help you you are going to have to provide more info. All you said was that you were getting blown out hair. Please provide more info so there is something to work with. Are you doing this with a portable flash unit on the camera or with studio strobe units? If the later then describe them, what light modifiers and controlers you were using and how you were using them, how you were taking meter readings etc. As soon as you help us out here, help will be on the way.
Happy New Year

[incendy]

It seems to be happening with any form of light that isn't natural but the photos I will take tomorrow I was planning on using two hensel 500 strobes, one with a softbox and the other for background with a reflector for fill. I am metering the area and if I go low enough to get the hair with proper exposure it seems I lose some detail in her face and eyes, just curious if you guys had any tricks you used for this type of situation

[D. Craig Flory]

For hair like hers ... don't use a hairlight. But, do use a gobo. That is an opaque piece of material used to block light. Put it in a position so that it blocks the light, from your key light, so it doesn't hit her hair.

[LightingMan]

Dear incendy:
Well, you still have not really provide much to work with so all I can do is suggest that you keep thing simple as this is not a difficult portrait to do. White or blond hair is very efficient at returning light so very little hair light is needed. It's certainly not a requirement to use hair light at all but as a portrait photographer I would indeed use some but only the tiniest amount just to add what I like to call "a kiss of hairlight". We never wish to risk losing detail in the hair so proper exposures and the correct working ISO is essential. Digital cameras are not all created equal and the ISO for one is no indication of the ISO of another. Like film, it is a very good idea to establish a working ISO for your particular camera by using a series of test images done at different ISO settings to determine which is the most correct ISO number to use on your flash meter.

You said that you have two strobes and plan to use one with a softbox (assumably for the main light) and "the other for background with a reflector for fill." I'm afraid that last part doesn't compute. Is it a fill or is it a background light? You also said that you are going to "meter the area." Again that is rather none specific and needs some clarification for it to make sense.

Once again, this kind of portrait presents no special problems at all. It simply needs a properly placed main light, a fill behind the camera to control the shadow levels and if desired (optional) a very small amount of hair light. Just enough to tell it's there but no more. Since you didn't say anything about what kind of background or color, I can't offer much comment there. If you want to provide more detailed information, I am sure more help is available to you.
Best wishes,

[incendy]

I am sorry Scott.. I didn't really know exacty what I was going to be doing so I didn't know what to provide:) Anyhow, I took the portrait as just practice.

Key Light is off the the left at about 45 degree angle, probably 3 and a half ft from her with a 42 inch softbox. Gold Reflector was used to the right at about 45 degrees and about 2ft away angled slightly up. Background light was about 1ft from the background with a blue gel on it. because I was just practicing I only used the modeling lights hence the really shallow dof. The hair was not a problem, but I am not very happy with the light on her left eye. In the camera it looked fine, but once I got home I wasn't very happy

http://www.incendy.com/replace.jpg

[Wilt]

Try reversing the placement of your key light and your fill source (reflector). But pose her the same as in the above shot. The lighting you used is 'broad', and 'short' is more flattering. And the fact that the highlight source does not illuminate quite so much of her hair will knock it down so it is not so prominent.

[incendy]

Try reversing the placement of your key light and your fill source (reflector). But pose her the same as in the above shot. The lighting you used is 'broad', and 'short' is more flattering. And the fact that the highlight source does not illuminate quite so much of her hair will knock it down so it is not so prominent.


I did both broad and short lighting, but with her face I liked this setup better! You are right though and using "short" lighting did make the hair look more detailed but also made her wrinkles stand out more for whatever reason

[LightingMan]

Hi Incendy:
It’s a good effort but I will have to agree with Wilt that you need to use short lighting. If you look up some of my posts in the last week or so, you will find detailed info as to how to create proper short loop lighting.

In addition, let me suggest a few other things for you to consider. The image is very top heavy because the subject placement is wrong. For a general head and shoulders portrait you need more space below the chin to give proper balance. A good general rule of thumb is to put roughly as much vertical space between the bottom of the chin and the bottom of the photograph as the dimension of the head from chin to top of head. See my example below.

You also need to turn her body a bit toward the camera so that here shoulders are wider than her head. Right now the visual width of her head is larger than that of her shoulders again making it very top heavy.

Let me also encourage you to consider that at this lovely lady’s age, we don’t need to look so intimately at her character lines and skin imperfections. Pulling back, which you will have to do to adjust the subject placement anyway, combined with a small amount of diffusion over the lens will break up the skin just enough to smooth it out. We are not talking soft focus here. Just a little diffusion to take the edge off her skin. Try one or two layers of simple black tulle. This is like bridal veil netting, only black, available at any fabric store. It’s dirt cheap and works very well for this. It will cost you about a third of a stop of light per layer so compensate to maintain a correct exposure.

Also, have her tilt her head a few degrees to soften the pose. With her eyes level with the horizon, you have created a bit of a static look, as if you caught her off guard. Just have her tilt her head over the front of her body a little and she will look even more sweet than she does here.

So far as that “gold” reflector? Please avoid it. There is no practical use for it in this image. Adding yellow light to her chin area with the rest of her skin looking normal is just not a good thing. Keep the skin normal.

Other things you could do to make it work would be to dress her in a dark color such as burgundy or deep blue with a high collar to cover her neck and showcase her kind face. A good rule to always think about is if it does not add to your image, it probably take away from it.

I would love to see you implement some of the changes discussed here and post a new image for all to see.

I hope this has been helpful.
Take care,

[incendy]

Thanks for the suggestions! I will give it a try hopefully tomorrow!

[incendy]

Well, I tried but she was too tired to model tonight:( I will try again Saturday