day 328 - crazy look

strong gradient on the wall, crazy look on the face.

setup shot:

day 327 - searchlights

i wanted to do a short depth of field shot with a strong rim light..... so i get an out-of-focus white line around things. it came out allright.

setup shot:

day 326 - wrapping it up

light that wraps seems to be something i keep coming back to in terms of what i want to put in my pictures.  i think my biggest interest in photography has been to put gradients onto otherwise non-gradient objects. so for example take a blank uniform wall, and have it go from light to dark areas. the same idea applies to the face, which is a roundish object, but all mostly the same color. if you light all areas on the face evenly, you get that big open light effect that is popular for headshots and whatnot.

but if you can drop a gradient on that same roundish object, you start to get really interesting things happening.

setup shot:

day 325 - head circle

for the third variation on the same equipment, i set up the diy beauty dish as a backlight / background element, and put the silver umbrella behind and above the camera. it's sort of an on-axis cross lighting thing, if you will. i like the strong graphic element of the beauty dish, and the slight grey gradient behind it being put there by the silver umbrella.

setup shot:

day 324 - same stuff different setup

i like to challenge myself to find more than one lighting solution using the same equipment. so for this shot i took the beauty dish and silver umbrella from day 323 and set them up in a cross light situation. it's not the most amazing setup ever, but it has a different feel to it.

setup shot:

day 323 - ring with direction

this is my fake-ring-light setup with additional silver umbrella camera right adding a strong directional feel to things. this feels a lot like the stuff the strobist likes to do..... using the ring light to establish the relative darkness of the shadow areas, and then add some directional light on top.

setup shot:

day 322 - grid two

for this one i reversed the setup from day 321.... now the softbox is my kicker light, and the hard gridded light is my main. it's interesting, seeing the results of tightly controlled hard light in a portrait. i think with the right subject, it could really be an effective way of doing things.

setup shot: