Portrait Lighting
Yes a well discussed topic here I'm sure, but one I would like advise on. I'm a nature photographer (amateur) and would like to start and expand on portrait photography. I played with some lighting today (150 watt incandescent) and from what I read, I guess the best would be CFL (and yes I'm on a budget). I'll be posting a lot here, so I'll hit the topic I came here for. Please look at this picture http://www.weddingtonphotography.com/thearian/test1.png and take a stab at the lighting setup...no doubt a professional gig, but how could I achieve something similar on a budget? Here's my photo of me from today with the listed bulb and one I failed to set my white balance on http://www.weddingtonphotography.com/thearian/test2.png All advice would be helpful. I used Adobe Lightroom on this photo (RAW format) but I ended up just leaving it as is w/o the WB correction.
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I'm no expert but I think there was a goodly amount post work on the image you posted....
Maybe try diffusing the light source to widen the impact on your face or perhaps use a reflector (any white/silver material) to fill in camera left a bit on the image you posted.....
I would encourage you to play with window light for this type of portrait as well...
Keep on experimenting and trying different things most of all....
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In that shot you posted as an example, I'd agree with Andrew that it's likely gridded lights since the light falloff is so steep and the light tightly controlled (if you don't know what these terms mean, get googling... or just read Lighting 101 as indicated above!). Because of the way her eyes are turned I can't decide if it's one or two lights, though - the shadow from the flowers means there's definitely one from camera right and above, but not sure if there's any fill from another light or not (I'm terrible at reverse-engineering these kinds of "sculpted" shots). Nik, care to chime in?
single light;
probably with a med size softwbox (2'x3') or an 42" umbrella;
located stright up no further that 3-4 ft from the subject.
HTH
Thank you to all for your replies. I'll dig in on the information supplied.
Nikolai- Given that these two (SB or Umbrella) could have been used here, what power of lighting (i.e 300 watts) and type?
Secondly, its near impossible to tell the power of light and type being used when reverse engineering a shot. If you're looking for suggestions, 300w/s strobes are great starter strobes, the more powerful the better. I personally dont like continuous light setups. Definitely check out the strobist blog that diva linked you to. Starting with speedlights is a really affordable way to get into off camera lighting. The vivatar strobes he suggests can be purchased for around $80/ea (very cheap).
When looking at getting lighting, consider down the road. Where do you see yourself using the lights. That will give you an extremely good look at what to get and why you should get them. Its an investment, start with one light, a light stand, and an umbrella. Create your setup around that.
Thank you for this info. I'll read into these suggestions.
As Jeremy said, it's very difficult to reverse engineer without knowing at least basic EXIF info (such as ISO, aperture, shutter speef, focal length), and even at that it wold require quite a lot of math to produce anything remotely resembling the actual data. Doable (i.e. I know exactly how), but complicated.
One can achieve a nearly indistinguishable effect in a variety of ways, using anything from speedlight to hotlight to CFL to studio strobes...