day 334 - in your face

yep, back to the same composition. up close and personal. this time with colored gels in the background.

setup shot:

day 333 - farther away

working in my small living room, i seem to keep setting up the same kind of shot.... tim really close to camera, background in the distance, crop just below the shoulders.... yeah. it's becoming my signature look, and i'm not sure i want it to be. i think i'd rather have more flexibility in my moves than just "this one shot is what i do". so maybe i'll back away from the camera for a while. do more of a three quarters shot.

setup shot:

day 332 - triple hard

three hard lights with a gold/silver reflector added into the mix. it does a great job of the white outline, with some nice softness in the middle.

setup shot:

day 331 - bokeh

wanted to do a bokeh shot, so i decided to set up with my neighbor's christmas lights in the background. short depth of field from my 35mm lens, at f1.8

no setup shot.

day 330 - wide open

still working the two reflectors, this time it's with a white umbrella, gives it more of an open bright feel.

setup shot:

day 329 - 2r, 1bd

two reflectors, one beauty dish

setup shot:

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:

day 321 - grid one

i don't use grids enough.... so i figured i'd set up a softbox main, and then use a gridded light as a camera right kicker. just an extra touch of light for that side, help seal the deal on the contrast levels.

setup shot:

day 320 - with dog on couch

didn't take a setup shot for this one. there's a sb-28 @ 1/4 high camera left into 40" softbox, and a sb-28 @ 1/32nd with a honl grid far camera right. camera right foreground there's a sb-28 with a blue gel into the ceiling for the ambient exposure. that's it.

day 319 - all the lights

set up all four of my flashes on this one. softbox for main, umbrella on the ground for fill/up, one on bookshelf for a highlight, one on coffee table for other side. i like it.

setup shot:

day 318 - greyscale

setup shot:

day 317 - softlighter 2

alisia was dying her hair, and had it all tied up in a knot on the top of her head. i asked her to pose real quick in front of my improvised softlighter, and this is the result. she looks good anytime, it's just a question of getting her to pose for me.

day 316 - fake softlighter pt 2

i'm still fascinated with the idea of a softlighter. so this is my second attempt to make one. in this one i took a 42" silver umbrella and clothes pinned my softbox diffuser screen to the front of it. the result was pretty much what i expect a softlighter to do, it resulted in a focused and yet soft light source. so high contrast, but low specularity. i like it.

setup shot:

day 315 - paper sheets

my first idea was to hang these sheets of paper from the ceiling so that a flash behind my head would bounce off of 'em, and create a soft light source for my face. that didn't work. there wasn't enough reflection going on, so i set up an umbrella on the floor for some extra soft uplight fill. it came out allright.

setup shot: