Copy Me Lighting Thread 5

Basically posted to refresh the "Follow me lighting technique" thread, as I believe it's a valuable resource

Requested by [user]Karmagarda[/user] who wanted a studio type shot. This was an off the cuff/rough setup to produce a headshot for a website.

The image below was set up, tested, shot and then dismantled, all within 15 minutes. The client was an Assistant Director of BNI (Business Networking International).
It was taken on Monday, early afternoon at the Bolton Wanderers Soccer stadium (The Reebok Stadium in Bolton) in a rather large room with the lights off, all ambient light coming from a wall of glass camera right (huge windows overlooking the soccer pitch). It wasn't particularly bright outside (dark clouds), so killing the ambient was going to be a piece of cake!
The reason for killing the ambient was to take control of the backdrop, which happened to be blue wallpaper, and Nicola was wearing a soft pink neck scarf which would have shouted, so I needed to change it to pink(ish!)
ISO 400, f5.6 1/60th sec actually shut down the ambient really well. I used the Nikon CLS to manipulate the flashes, controlled by an SU-800.
I used two brollies in a clamshell setup (great for softening portraits and reducing postwork!)
Upper strobe at EV0.0 (meaning it was just standard setting)
Lower strobe at EV-0.3 (meaning it was set to 1/3 below the correct exposure), so as to provide definition to Nicola's face.
Neither of these two strobes were gel'd as the ambient was daylight. Even though it was effectively killed, any seepage of daylight had to be accounted for, so I set the WB to Cloudy, which is ever so slightly warmer than standard flash WB and good for skin tones.
Now then, the background strobe was on a stand about 5 feet behind Nicola, and facing the wall. It was actually about 6 inches from the wall to give a hot spot and then fadeout. It was red gel'd and set to EV-0.7 to underexpose by 2/3rds
The strobe itself was almost head height with Nicola, and hidden because it was in direct line with Nicola and the camera.

Any comments?

Great post and thanks for the detail. I think that your decision to change the bg colour was spot on. It seems that it seeps through onto her her though.

Hi Andy,
Yes, there is a little contamination towards the back of her hair on her right side. (Camera left). In hindsight, I could have turned the rear strobe lower, and possibly removed the stofen, although the stofen helps radiate the light. The time allocated meant it was a rough and ready setup/shoot/dismantle situation, but given another 10 minutes, I'd likely have spotted the bleed and done something about it.
Luckily, it makes no difference to Nicola as the image was uploaded to their site inside half an hour of her receiving it, so I guess I'm happy.
Very good observation though

Michael, it is all down to guys like yourself who take the time to post detailed threads that I am beginning to see more and understand the technical stuff a bit better.

Thanks Andy, kind of you to say so
Have you checked the previous 4 examples from Diddy Dave and I?
You'll find them listed in the original copy me thread, indicated in my first post at the top of this page.

Excellent! Thanks for the detail on this Michael. I'm going to be posting some copy shots pretty soon so watch this space!

Looking forward to it Conor, and sorry the post was overdue

Right, well that "pretty soon" was very much not eh! So sorry about the delay here too!

Anyway, I finally got around to getting a bit of a studio setup and getting some studio type shots. I didn't go for a clam style setup, but rather a high softbox for top of head and a fill on right, mixing between shoot through and bare strobe. Did this for most of my shots, one of my favourites was probably this one:



But, then the right strobe stopped firing, let's call it my first happy accidental! I quite liked it and decided to shoot more with it off, and got one of my favouries from the shoot:



This week I recieved gels, so at some stage I'll get some more with the effects you've shown here. Thanks for the technique!

Nicely done Conor, and I particularly like the first one, especially in the B&W

Great stuff!