photoshop kungfu

i've been working on my photoshop kungfu, and this is an old picture i was using as practice.... i kinda like how it came out, so i'm posting it here. yay!

shadow play

so, the idea originally for this one was that i wanted a pose that was casting a big shadow on the wall behind me. big shadow means the light source needs to be low and hard. so i set up the light low and hard. problem with that is low hard light makes people look terrible. you get all these weird face shadows.... it's like holding a flashlight under your chin to tell a scary story. not a good look 90% of the time.

so, the solution is to gobo the light coming up from below, so that there's a shadow area where your face is. and then gridspot a light from above to light up the face area. this way your face looks good, and you get the crazy shadow behind you.

this is my first attempt at this, and it's a quick and dirty proof of concept type thing. it works, it definitely works, but it could be a lot tighter than this. in this shot light from above is spilling past me and hitting the wall, eating away at my shadow a bit. and my gobo below is throwing a whole shadow area around my face, so that it looks as if my shadow has a giant soft-edged head.

with a little tweaking, both problems could be fixed. but this is just to see how easy this type of shot is. turns out, it's pretty easy. i could use this technique for any subject that is supposed to be formidable. be great to use this with short people most of all, have them stand in front of a huge brick wall or something.

setup shot: