Experimental Lighting

[JDTurner]

This is one photo I took of a friend of mine, he's in a band and they wanted me to take some pictures. I wanted to go for some cool lighting so I tried colored gels on my flashes. I think it came out well, but I value the critiques I get here so I wanted to know what you guys think. Mostly about the lighting. I hate the background but that's all I really had to work with. If you can, critique the whole photo (exposure, composition, whatever...)



Canon EOS 60D
Exposure 0.013 sec (1/80)
Aperture f/13.0
Focal Length 50 mm
ISO Speed 100

I used three different flashes on wireless syncs, and a beauty dish just above my friend and camera right.

[Niresangwa]

Hey JD..

as far as your lighting goes, a couple of things.

I like the gel tones you used, sometimes choices are a little harsh and contrasting, but these work well.

I think your key needed to be powered up a little. Not sure how you had them set, but the whole image is a little too dark for me, and even trying to consider mood, your kicker off to camera left is over-powering in relation to the key.

I would probably either dial down your light on the left and pump the key, or dial down the light on the left and open up the aperture. As it is, it's coming out as grey, which is never flattering, especially in a colour shot.

If you tried to brighten it to fix it in PP, I'd fear you'd blow the left-side light, but its worth a shot as far as I'm concerned. Just a quick levels adjustment will take that haze off of the whole image as well..

One thing I would do in PP would be to bring up the contrast and vibrance a little to really bring out the gel effects. Given the lack of reds in the skin, you might get away with bumping the saturation, simply.

The background is actually kind of neat in my opinion.

There's good coverage however and no weird shadows, so I'd be happy with it if I could fix the muddiness brought on by the key light issues I highlighted above.

Again, just what I would do. I have a feeling that using f8 might have been my choice and depending on your power settings for the left-side light, would have dropped it 1/8 to 1/16th power.

Composition, it's simple and works.

Steve

[kstiltne]

Originally Posted by Niresangwa

Hey JD..

as far as your lighting goes, a couple of things.

I like the gel tones you used, sometimes choices are a little harsh and contrasting, but these work well.

I think your key needed to be powered up a little. Not sure how you had them set, but the whole image is a little too dark for me, and even trying to consider mood, your kicker off to camera left is over-powering in relation to the key.

I would probably either dial down your light on the left and pump the key, or dial down the light on the left and open up the aperture. As it is, it's coming out as grey, which is never flattering, especially in a colour shot.

If you tried to brighten it to fix it in PP, I'd fear you'd blow the left-side light, but its worth a shot as far as I'm concerned. Just a quick levels adjustment will take that haze off of the whole image as well..

One thing I would do in PP would be to bring up the contrast and vibrance a little to really bring out the gel effects. Given the lack of reds in the skin, you might get away with bumping the saturation, simply.

The background is actually kind of neat in my opinion.

There's good coverage however and no weird shadows, so I'd be happy with it if I could fix the muddiness brought on by the key light issues I highlighted above.

Again, just what I would do. I have a feeling that using f8 might have been my choice and depending on your power settings for the left-side light, would have dropped it 1/8 to 1/16th power.

Composition, it's simple and works.

Steve

nailed it!

[JDTurner]

Thanks so much Steve! That helps a lot and I'll take everything you said into consideration next time I do this. I did have a little trouble with the power on my key light, I'm trying to work on that one. Its probably because that's what the beauty dish was on. I'm glad you like the background! I wasn't too sure it would work well.
JD

[Niresangwa]

No worries, glad to offer an opinion.

As far as the beauty dish, I use one exclusively as my key for most of my stuff. They're great for a soft spill, but because of how they work, they really use up the juice. I have to have them set to full power, 1/1 when the other heads are set at around 1/16th or so.

Another suggestion if you ever get to shoot this again with that background, is to use it a little more. you can use a bare headed light set behind and parallel to the wall... if you angle it correctly, you can both scrape the wall to get interesting effects out of the texture, and also pick up a rimlighting effect on that side of the model... just a thought.

[ctcook]

You already got great advice for your lighting. I just want to add in that the background looks good. It has pattern and is not distracting. If I'm not mistaken it's a sound booth? So, that works well with the musician theme.

[JDTurner]

You got it! Haha, it was a friends studio and its pretty readily available for us to shoot in so next time we do I'll play around with it a little more!