Question about using Barn Doors on strobes

Does it have anything to do with the long hair on her right side? The hair appears to be coming out of her chin.
Maybe?

BINGO!
TELL HIM WHAT HE'S WON JOHNNY!

Well that didn't take very long at all.
Very good!
When we let the far side of a subjects hair hang down, past the chin it's called the "billy goat effect" and should be avoided. I have one of my very early images of a bride shot back in the early 80's that I show at my seminars to illustrate the point and very few people catch it but once they do, it stands out like a sore thumb.
Below is your image before and after. The usual procedure is to hook the far side hair over the ear so that it does not show. If that is not possible, then it can be pinned back so it doesn't hang down past the chin. Since yours was against a dark background and not nearly as obvious as some, go right ahead and pat self on back for me. To everyone else who participated or at least thought about it, pretend that you received a complimentary case of Turtlewax!

Looking forward to seeing your next efforts Robert. Now go and call your mom and tell her that you detected the billy goat effect and make her proud!
Best wishes,
Scott

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Hey Scott,

I think I will pat myself on the back and cook a nice steak this evening. I wasn't sure if that was the answer but I did notice that it looked odd and since you were not talking about the lighting or the hair style it made sense that it was something like that and was staring me in the face every time I looked at it but took a while to register.

I hope to work on this tonight and have some new samples to post this evening or tomorrow morning.

I hope others will continue to participate in this thread.

good work robert!!!!!

Oh boy...dog may be mans best friend but I don't think that dogs are a mannequins best friend.

I had a friend over for dinner and she has a beautiful little puppy. While eating dinner we heard some noise and found her cute little puppy with the wig from the mannequin is her mouth and was doing quite a job on it. What a mess! If you're familiar with these synthetic wigs then you know they are nothing like human hair and become a matted, knotted mess easily and quickly.

So today I am going to see if we can salvage the wig with some form of haircut. If we can, my model with just have short hair. If we can't then I'm off to get another wig.

Since we're using a hairlight in our experiments I don't want to work on the lighting without hair on my model so I'm hoping to resolve this as quickly as possible.

Robert!
Don't cut the hair!
Take it to your local beauty shop and ask them to put it back to normal for you. They won't charge much for this. For these gals, it's a nothing job to come it out and make it look nice for you.

Robert,

That's too bad about the wig! My wife bought one for me (that doesn't sound quite right) and the care instructions said that you could wash it BUT don't comb it or brush it until it's dry. (I can't believe I'm having this conversation.) and apparantly there is special wig shampoo or cleaner, but you may not care about that since it is only going on the mannequin and not a "live" head.

So , ahem, how 'bout them Bears and Colts going to the SuperBowl! -- Trying to "man-up"

I look forward to the posts in this thread and thank all of the contributors for their participation!

J.Simonian

Hey, you can still be a man and worry about hair & makeup.

pparker wrote in post #2580153
Hey, you can still be a man and worry about hair & makeup.

Absolutely Pete

Well, the wig is basically ruined. We attempted to give her some sort of haircut and she's not looking good. I'm going to be ordering another wig this week and in the meantime I'll do what I can and at least we're doing profiles now so I only need to have one side looking ok...lolol

I hope to post later today with samples.

Ok, after much trouble and having a team of specialists working on my mannequin's wig, I was able to fix her back up just enough to do the profile shot. The other side did not do as well.

Here are the results of my profile portrait lighting after making some adjustments to the positions of the lights and the fill reflector.
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Robert, she's got the frizzies, but that is good! She is more like a real person in her hair.

Now you can use the hairlights to shine THROUGH some of the hair, that is lifted off the rest with more 'life'. With the old wig, everthing was matted down (oily matted hair) so that you could not put transmitted light thru her hair, but had to use reflected light off of her hair.

Wilt wrote in post #2583330
Robert, she's got the frizzies, but that is good! She is more like a real person in her hair.

Now you can use the hairlights to shine THROUGH some of the hair, that is lifted off the rest with more 'life'. With the old wig, everthing was matted down (oily matted hair) so that you could not put transmitted light thru her hair, but had to use reflected light off of her hair.

Thanks Wilt. I'm seeing that now too. I won't go as far as saying it was a happy accident because I'm not sure we can fix up her left side the way we did the right, but if I do get a replacement I'm going to get one that does not have the wig so heavily loaded up with hair. There was a lot of hair, very heavy and very thick. I just would have wanted to give her a haircut without having to cut around the mess.

Anyway, I think the shots I took this evening are looking a little better.

Hi Robert
On your latest test images, I am seeing something that I need some clarification on. Can you prepare a diagram showing how you did this I am seeing an edge light on the outer features of the face suggesting that the main light is too far to the subject's left but then I also see the subject's right ear lit when it should not be lit suggesting the main light is too close to the axis of the face. Maybe your fill is not situated as it needs to be. I'm also interested in how you are using your hair light. Let me see a diagram when you have a moment so we can discuss this better.
Thanks,

This thread should really be a sticky. Valuable information here.

lightingman wrote in post #2590006
Hi Robert
On your latest test images, I am seeing something that I need some clarification on. Can you prepare a diagram showing how you did this I am seeing an edge light on the outer features of the face suggesting that the main light is too far to the subject's left but then I also see the subject's right ear lit when it should not be lit suggesting the main light is too close to the axis of the face. Maybe your fill is not situated as it needs to be. I'm also interested in how you are using your hair light. Let me see a diagram when you have a moment so we can discuss this better.
Thanks,

Hi Scott,

I'll prepare an accurate diagram of the setup I used and post it later this morning. I do know that when I was working on the lighting I was getting a brighter circular area surrounding the subject's right eye and it looked very odd with the rest of the right side of the face. In my attempt to control that area I might have thrown off some of the other elements.