Advice on how to produce something like this...

P

photonumpty

Messages
193
Name
Mat
Edit My Images
Yes
Hi All,
I'm looking for some advice on how to produce an image something similar to the one that I have hopefully posted.

My wife and I are lucky enough to be expecting our first child in about 7 weeks and would really like to be able to take some images of this sort. A sort of before and after series....

Now obviously she is being rather brave letting me do this and I really really really do not want to mess the whole thing up. So I thought I would ask for some advice.

I have a set of 2 Elinchrom D-lite 4's and soft boxes, a 5 in one reflector, a white and a black background cloth and a room with about 14 ft of space in it.

Do I have a hope in hell?

I'm assuming that I will need one light aimed at the background but dont know whether or not I should use a soft box and then maybe one light directly in front of my model and maybe high up with a reflector to one side and low...

But the truth is I have no idea. I have no idea about distances or stop values or anything. I will have to stuff a dressing gown with pillows and have a play or something. But if anybody has any advice that they would be willing to share it would be MASSIVELY welcome.

Cheers,

PN

190.jpg
 
i think your going to struggle to get the background completely white with only two lights.
so it is either a bit of PP if your up for it or shift to a black background.
keep the missus away from the background by bout 6 ft if you got the room, then try what you suggested with the light high up and a reflector close in and low down. then if need be, provide a key light(?) from behind to highlight the shoulder(so the flash is pointing forward slightly, have a look at the elinchrom dvd, he calls it a hairlight).

dont take this as a definitive guide, i am in no way an expert at this, but it would be where i would start. you are going to have to use the softboxes on your d lites, as i assume you havent got reflectors or anything else other than the softboxes.

Congrats, hope it goes quickly and easily, and why arent you sleeping while you got the chance.
 
i would look at using bout iso 100, shutter bout 1/250th and f stop bout f8(dunno whether you knew that). front light set bout 4, rear bout 3. take a pic of a stuffed toy sitting on a chair and check the histogram. upload to the comp and physically look at what it like, then adjust to suit the effect.
 
LightingSetupcopy.jpg


Try this set up.

The strobe to the top right is one of the d-lites with a softbox on but without the front translucent cover to try and act like a strobe with a reflector or barn door effect so as to fill the backdrop with light.

The reflector on the left will add light to the backdrop where the light falls away, because you only have one light.

The key/main light with softbox is on the lower right, just above head height pointing to the models left shoulder.

Firstly I would experiment with the background lights so that you can achieve the white finish you want.

Then add the model and try different settings so as to get the shadow correct.

If there is going to be only the two you present, tie the material in a knot at the out of frame side and then, attach some string to the knot and loosely tie it to the light stand, then the material should stay in the air. Be careful to try and not make the model move around too much as you don't want the light falling over.

It may take 30 mins after you have got the background right but I think it's a cracking idea and would love to see the shots after if the missus agrees.

Hope this helps.
 
Basically I agree with most of what Tiler 65 says, although I would use a slower shutter speed - max theoretical speed isn't necessary and may not work with your studio flash.

Basically you need to experiment. My guess is that a black background might work much better - and will certainly be easier than white - but why not try both?

You may like to try a type of rim lighting, where you place a single softbox to the front of your subject and behind, angled forward.

I was going to point you to an example in my gallery and then found that I haven't got round to uploading any photos yet :)
 
You guys are all utter stars!!

Thank you so much for all of this, I was really beginning to panic there but now I have something to work to. I can't believe you went tot he trouble of making a photoshop setup tiler65...

I am much in debt... which normally means its my round at the bar!

Thank you thank you thank you...

As to the not sleeping... alas I work at sea and am bobbing around somewhere north of Norway on the night shift... Sleep is not an option, which im guessing is just good training for the future... Now all I have to do is make it back home in time.

If you upload those pics Garry I would definitely be interested in having a look and so long as I don't utterly screw the whole thing up I'm sure my better half would let me post a pic or two.

Fingers crossed..........

PN
 
Uploading photos here looks a bit complicated for me:LOL:

The shot I had in mind is the back view of the black model here and that post also explains how it was done - an ideal approach to 'bump' photography IMO
 
Right here we go then...first proper outing of a Canon 40d, 50mm 1.8 II and Elinchrom D-lite 4 to go set. They probably suffered a bit going from a 10mp raw file to a 200kb jpg but it should give an idea. All of these were shot at 1/200 F11 ISO 100.

Its been ages since I started this thread but here are the results of about 3 different 1 hour attempts to get this vaguely right.

We were hampered massively by technical difficulties (i.e i'm an idiot with a camera) and time restraints (my wifely model getting tired of parading her enormous bump around) but these are ok-ish.. I think. It was my first attempt with a new camera and my first try with a set of studio lights so I'm not really sure what to make of them.

In truth I am not entirely happy with any of the shots that we took. Maybe the pose wasn't quite right in one or the gauze cloth fell awkwardly in another or maybe the light was dire in some and better in others. Mostly I suspect I was just frustrated at blindly changing settings in the hope of getting lucky. All in all it was fun though, but I think we learned more about posing than we did about the camera but then that is what learning is for.

We have worked out that I'm terrible at giving instructions or seeing the same thing that the camera sees. In the end we had to take a few shots and get them up on the pc monitor to get a handle on what was really happening. Which is when we learned that not all monitors (or graphics cards) are created equally. Things that looked perfect on my laptop looked terrible on the desktop or the same photo on different screens seems to show totally different colours.. oh well. Will be trying the black cloth and rim lighting next as after spending all that time trying to get a bright white background i'm no longer sure I even like it.. it all seems so artificial and unnatural now. So the next shoot definitely needs shadows!... assuming of course that the baby doesn't come early, only 3 weeks to go and i'm at sea for two of those!

bumpage.jpg



bumpage2.jpg



tailage.jpg



chairage.jpg



MG_4697BWHcrop3.jpg


I basically followed the advice and layout given by Tiler65, buggered around with settings and positions for ages as Garry suggested and then returned to the same format again. Using the larger of the two soft boxes without a difuser right up against the back drop at F6 did a fairly good job of making the background white although I had to add a reflector on the opposite side to get it truly white and wrinkle free. This caused a problem with there being just too much light bouncing around and it seemed to drown everything else out.

To combat this I moved the model as far away from the background as I could (about 7 feet) and pushed the hair light up into the air as high as I could go (about 10 feet) and used its lowest setting of F2 but I just couldnt seem to get rid of the overpowering light. In truth 'the studio' is our living room which is white with white furniture and a cream carpet so this probably didnt help. In the end I got rid of the reflector and treated the wrinkles in photoshop.... although my photoshop skills are pretty much limited to cropping and the paint bucket! If anybody has any in camera settings or trickery advice about what I could have tried I would love to hear it.

The one that I like best is the first one 'bumpage'. We originally tried to emulate the sample image that I posted and had my wife completely side on to the camera.. but this was a little unflattering in the erm overall width department, she described herself as looking like a ship in full sail! So we turned her toward the camera slightly which had the effect of reducing the overall appearance of any unwanted bumps.. but also had the undesired effect of raising the shoulder nearest the camera, which in many many ditched photo's made her look like The Hulk on steroids, especially if the arm was held at a right angle.. although the hand on hip seemed to get rid of this. Bumpage2 and Tailage are just variations on the same theme and I suspect that Tailage should probably be cropped down.

We did try to do some full body shots but I ended up with a more or less background descending into increasing amounts of Grey and wrinkles on the floor. Actually it was this Grey texture that made me think that in future I would avoid the total white image as I just liked the shadows and texture... but keeping with the theme of white backgrounds how would you guys light a floor without once again flooding the model?

Anyway, comments, criticism and most importantly advice would be most welcome.

Cheers for all the help so far.

PN
 
I like the first 2 shots
 
Smashing, i love maternaty shots.. well done.. a really good attempt..
 
there are some excellent shots there(y)

well done to your lass for being brave to have them done, and posted on a forum as well! :):clap:
 
You've done a good job but basically you don't really have enough space to produce a pure white background without resorting to photoshop work. As you can see, the fine detail of the hair is being damaged by the light reflected from the background.

Here is an example of the rimlighting I suggested earlier.
OK, the model is black, isn't pregnant and it's a back view but as you can see, it will work for 'bump' pictures too; how far behind the subject you place the lights will determine how much of the body is revealed.
black_beautiful.jpg


BTW, the background is actually a white wall - but photographed dark because it was unlit, the only light being the 2 softboxes pointing away from the wall. If I had moved her slightly further from the wall it would have photographed completely black, but personally I pefer both pure white and pure black because they both compress distance and make the shot look 2-dimensional.
Hope this helps
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top