Using hot lights in the Studio

[Murtasma]

My friend needed some help in the studio this weekend. He is taking studio classes at a local community college here. I helped him out with lighting configurations and ideas. He didn't have an assignment due so this session was open for us to experiment how we saw fit.

Unfortunately since the class just started they have all the students using hot lights ugh. I believe in the next 2 classes he will have access to use the strobe units. He is going to have me come in each weekend to work with him and his group. I think this works out great I was going to sign up for the class but didn't want to pay the $400.00 when that money could be better spent building soft boxes, buying strobes and remote triggers for my own use. I basically get to take the class for free hurray!

For this image we setup 2 1000 watt hot lights both with 4in snoots mounted on the front. Each light was setup to pointed down slightly in front of him coming from both camera left and right. We then had a large art core foam board that he was holding with his hands to bounce the light back up to his face softening the light.

Another 300 watt hot light was setup behind him as a hair light. The snoot we used on the hot light was too small so it would not evenly light the back of his head. We setup these shots right when the studio was about to close so there wasn't much time for adjustments.


The background in this image was lit by a 1000 watt hot light at camera right. The hot light was place close to the background with a blue gel over it, we also closed the barn doors on the light to stop light from spilling on the rest of the scene.

A large soft box was placed camera left above his head pointing down. We then used a large art core foam board placed camera right to throw some more light onto the shadows of his face under his hat.


Same configuration as the first image but this time the lights where pointed level with is head. I positioned him so his face was just starting to enter the beam of hard light that was in front of his face. No hair light was used in this image.



This is a picture of me we made in the studio. The chess board was lit separately with a cool blue gel over it, barn doors were also closed to create a focused beam of light on the chess board. The background was a black seamless paper back drop. The picture of me was lit like the 3rd image in the thread. We decided to combine these two separate shots in photoshop. While we were taking these two separate images we had no intention of putting them together. I think it worked well here but I really would like to light this scene in one shot. I have a lot of ideas to improve the quality of light in this image. It should be a lot of fun to revisit.

[CanonRebelz]

Good job. Congrats on getting to pretty much take the class for free, too
The 1st, 3rd, and 4th images are nicely done.