How to light a full body portrait with a single 4' umbrella

[Raptyr]

Hi, I am an event photographer moving into portraits. I have pretty much got the head shot and head and torso shots down, but I'm having trouble with full body. The feet are always underexposed. I've tried everything to get those extremities more light. I've moved the umbrella down so that the center is torso height, and put a reflector for the feet, and I still get underexposed feet. Any advise would be appreciated.

I'm using a Nikon SB-900 triggered by pocket-Wizard.

[zona5101]

wheres the center of the umbrella pointed? You don't need to lower the umbrella height, you can keep it higher to get the shadows to fall where you want, you need to vary the feather by changing where the center shaft of the umbrella is pointing. Also increasing distance is your friend in this case as it evens out the light...just as bringing in the light and increasing the fstops throws your BG into darkness, the opposite is also true.