Newborn/Maternity advice needed

I have a maternity/ newborn shoot coming up and I'm struggling with my lighting. Mostly I shoot toddlers and I have full light for them because they are constantly running around. I have 2 ab800s, one soft box large32 x 40, 1 silver umbrella and a strip soft box 10 x36 currently for lighting.
What I want to pull off is the look of the newborn partially lit, where the light falls off really fast and half of the baby's body/ or the back half of the mom is in shadow. It seems that no matter where I position my lights, I always have too much light. I'm just not getting how to do this. Any advice would be appreciated.
Kristin

Have you tried bringing the lights in as close to the subject as is physically possible?

this is perfect example as to why people pack speedlights with them... but obviously, i run into the situation that i have NOT ENOUGH light. lol...

what you can do is place an ND filter in front of your lights. that will definitely help to lower your power down. 2 to 8 stops regarding which filter you use.

sma1mom wrote in post #7687006
I have a maternity/ newborn shoot coming up and I'm struggling with my lighting. Mostly I shoot toddlers and I have full light for them because they are constantly running around. I have 2 ab800s, one soft box large32 x 40, 1 silver umbrella and a strip soft box 10 x36 currently for lighting.
What I want to pull off is the look of the newborn partially lit, where the light falls off really fast and half of the baby's body/ or the back half of the mom is in shadow. It seems that no matter where I position my lights, I always have too much light. I'm just not getting how to do this. Any advice would be appreciated.
Kristin

Yeah, you need to bring the light close and make it as concentrated on the parts you want to light as you can, and have the rest dark... That's what you'd get if you took a photo of someone in complete darkness with only 1 work/table lamp pointed into a part of them, so basically you need to replicate it with a bit more finesse of course...

do you have a snoot?

Marloon wrote in post #7687087
this is perfect example as to why people pack speedlights with them...

No need to use speedlites for this. The OP just needs to bring the light REAL close and stop the lens down accordingly, then makes sure that the background is not too close. The light fall-off will make sure that the background will turn dark, if not black (if you have a black background, it will make your job easier, and you will be able to do this kind of shot in a smaller space).

The following was made with an Elinchrom RX600 and 53" Octa in a fairly small room. It shows the light fall-of that the OP is talking about, IMO:

sma1mom wrote in post #7687006
I have a maternity/ newborn shoot coming up and I'm struggling with my lighting. Mostly I shoot toddlers and I have full light for them because they are constantly running around. I have 2 ab800s, one soft box large32 x 40, 1 silver umbrella and a strip soft box 10 x36 currently for lighting.
What I want to pull off is the look of the newborn partially lit, where the light falls off really fast and half of the baby's body/ or the back half of the mom is in shadow. It seems that no matter where I position my lights, I always have too much light. I'm just not getting how to do this. Any advice would be appreciated.
Kristin

another option would be to block the light with a flag or a sturdy piece of black foam board to control where you want the light. And definitely pull your subject further away from the background so the fall off works well.