Archive for September, 2011
We’ve been using our Alien Bee strobe kit for a little over 6 months and have been just loving the results we are getting from it. We’re buying some new goodies soon and can’t wait to write about them. But in he meantime, we’ve gotten a lot of questions about how we lit these two images from a session we did a few months ago, so here ya go.I wish I took a few pictures on the lighting set up, but a description is just going to have to do. So from one Denver Senior Portrait Photographer to another photographer, here’s how we did it.
Image 1:Canon 5Dmk2, 24-70L, f9 @ 1/200th at ISO 100
This was one of our last photos from Matt’s Senior Session at the old Sugar Mill in Sterling, Colorado. I noticed the sun was just about to set during the “golden hour” and loved the look of the sun peaking through the window in the upper right and how it shined on these barrels. I knew I wanted the sky to be a little on the moody end of things and for all of the clutter on the right to be darkened without having to do it in photoshop. So I placed my Paul C Buff Octabank about 3 feet from Matt’s face to the right and up and shined it almost completely away from him towards image left so only the softest of light would be hitting his face. I knew this would accomplish a few things, darken all of my space to the right. Secondly, since my light source was so close to the subject, I knew my background would be less affected by my soft box and more affected by the warm sun rays you see on the windows and the grass behind him. Lastly, I wanted to create some subtle shadows and light on his face, and knew by using the softest part of my 52″ Octabank that I could achieve the look I was going for. I chose a very wide angle lens which gave a little distortion to his feet and legs, but I wanted that “layered” look you tend to get with wide angle lenses over more telephoto lenses. Plus, since my light was so close to the subject, it allowed me to get in where I needed to. This is pretty much how the image looked right out of the camera. I boosted clarity in Lightroom 3.0 to 8 and dodged the window subtly, but it’s an honest image right out of the camera.
Image 2: 5Dmk2, 24-70L, 64mm, F8, 1/200 , ISO 200
Matt is a super cool kid and we wanted to be really different in his senior photo session and incorporate some unique lighting, posing, and locations in his shoot. I really wanted to play on some shadows with this image to give it a lot of attitude. I put the main light about 5 feet from him to give a little more contrast and that way the hottest part of the light would be hitting his face and hopefully creating some cool shadows. Below is the image right out of the camera
I overexposed (in my opinion) the image just a little bit so I brought the exposure down to -26 to bring the sky, shadows, and general lighting and introduced fill light of +7 in Lightroom 3. I added clarity of +10 and brought down the blue channel luminance to -58 to darken the skies as well as the green channel saturation. Lastly I cloned out the distracting telephone pole. All of this resulted in some slight tweeks that I like a little more.
If you have any questions, please let me know and I’d be glad to answer
Contact Me: 408-440-6281
Scott Stebner of Stebner Photography is a Denver Senior Portrait Photographer specializing in edgy, artistic, and non traditional senior portraits.