helping the idiot learn to light !!!

[ronin_1906]

hello all...

i've been teaching myself this wonderful art for a couple of years now, but i'm still feeling like a total idiot when it comes to lighting...i shoot portraits mainly, and would like to start doing more "intimate" shots, where light and shadow are used to hide or expose the nude or scantily clad female form...i love "low light" photography, but i don't know enough to get what i see in my head to come out in my work...having started shooting outdoors first, i regret waiting so long to purchase decent lighting equipment to learn with...can anyone please help me figure out how to make my images look like this...

http://modelmayhem.com/pic.php?pid=791779 or,

http://modelmayhem.com/pic.php?pid=1551806

any help would be appreciated...and by the way, i'm shooting a 20D, 28-135mm f3.5-5.6 & tamron 17-50 f2.8 lenses, 430 ex, with 2 AB400s, a 20 deg. honeycomb grid, 2 shoot through white umbrellas...

[awad]

my advice to you is, keep shooting. watch carefully at how the light falls on your subject. move the lights around while watching. you might want to first try this with an inanimate object, so you don't look psychotic in front of a model. start off with one light, you'll see how easy it is to create shadows, or take them away. add in other lights as you feel comfortable.

anyways, thats just how i learned. so take that as you will.

good luck!

[ronin_1906]

thanks for the advice, john...i'm almost embarassed to find out how little i know about something i thought i was getting the hang of...i normally only use one of the "bees" when i'm shooting a model, and my 430 acts as a fill...one specific thing that i want to learn to incorporate is the honeycomb grid (which just arrived yesterday)...help???

[Curtis N]

The links you posted only work for members at modelmayhem.

[awad]

thanks for the advice, john...i'm almost embarassed to find out how little i know about something i thought i was getting the hang of...i normally only use one of the "bees" when i'm shooting a model, and my 430 acts as a fill...one specific thing that i want to learn to incorporate is the honeycomb grid (which just arrived yesterday)...help???

on the first link you posted, you could probably recreate that by setting the light with the honeycomb, at a stop or two brighter than the main light with the umbrella, and position it from the left.

[forkball]

First one looks like it was lit with a large softish(not really soft but not hard direct either) light source from the side (probably a small soft box or umbrella) positioned at camera right as the key light, you can see the light pattern on the face... it splits the model down the middle. Then a harder light source was used to kick the other side from the side and slightly behind. It also looks about a stop brighter than the key light. Look at the hard light on her arm and face and imagine the key light is gone... you can see the pattern to determine direction. Also a background light was used to provide even more separation.

The second image looks to me like a simple single lightsource at 90 degrees. There's some gradation of shadow so it's probably a lightbank or rectangular softbox with grid, and MAYBE a tiny squirt of fill from a reflector... but it's not very close if it's there.

I'm no expert so take my assessment for what it is.... an educated guess. This would be how I would try to achieve these looks.

[Wilt]

Learn to 'see' while using nothing but an ordinary incandescent source (...a flash is merely a momentarily brighter version of that!!! )


Learn also to translate different exposures into different levels of tonality...put your camera in B&W mode and shoot a bracketed set of shots around each exposure point indicated by the light meter. For example, if the meter says 1/30 f/4, shoot a series from 1/125 f/4 down thru 1/8 f/4, simply to learn to visualize the lighting at various levels of exposure...some will be moody, others will be simply overexposed, but you will be training your eye in the process!


Find some other examples of lighting you are trying to achieve, on open web sites that do not force us to sign up first to see the example!