Lighting Cure?
galaxycowpoke
Registered Users Posts: 155 Major grins
I'm thinking about lighting solutions for a shot like this one that I captured last Sunday. Sunlight was coming from the left. Trees diffused the light, but it was splotchy. I used a bit of front fill, that was it, no reflectors.
I'm thinking maybe a large diffuser between subject and sunlight to even out the light. And then maybe a reflector behind and to the right of the subject to bounce some sunlight for highlighting of the hair and more separation from background. Any other suggestions?
BTW, the *real* subject rescheduled, so my wife stood in for some practice shots that day.
I'm thinking maybe a large diffuser between subject and sunlight to even out the light. And then maybe a reflector behind and to the right of the subject to bounce some sunlight for highlighting of the hair and more separation from background. Any other suggestions?
BTW, the *real* subject rescheduled, so my wife stood in for some practice shots that day.
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Will a diffuser even out the lights and shadows? I thought it would only stop down the light, not even it out.
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In addition to reducing the light somewhat a diffuser will, of course, also soften it. But I've never really used a diffuser with light filtered through a tree; I'm thinking it will at least smooth out the uneven spots, if not eliminate them.
Thanks, Murphy. I was using a Lumiquest bounce diffuser mounted on the flash for this shot. I haven't used it in a while and probably had the flash a bit underpowered as a result. Coincidentally, I ordered a Lightsphere to try just before reading your message. It will be interesting to see what it does with tree shade.
Maybe I'm overthinking it. It could be as simple as boosting the fill. But I think I'd still like to bring down the highlights a bit (from the filtered sunlight) with an overhead diffuser before applying front flash fill.
I'm not sure a diffuser will really help in that lighting situation much either.
I would be interested to hear from folks who have actually shot in that situation - dappled shade/sun with a diffuser.
I think real shade with a reflector will be more successful.
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It seems like you have to avoid the splotchy, filtered sunlight as already discussed. A large diffuser should work fine as it wil block most of the intensity of the direct beams of light. It would probably take too much fill to try to overpower it.
It looks to me like you could have used a little more fill to light up the subject's left side (viewer's right).
The white balance seems challenging here. It looks like you have three different kinds of lighting competing here: direct sunlight, reflected sunlight (e.g. shade) and fill flash. The subject's skin tone looks a little too blue to me, but the background looks about right. Looking at skin tones in CMYK, it seems like there's too much cyan and it could use some warming.
The brightness of the background (particularly on the right) makes it difficult to achieve the tonal separation between foreground and background that you asked about. You could think about stopping down more and use more fill to light the foreground (thus reducing the apparent brightness of the background), but you'd have to experiment with that to see if it works for what you want. I wonder if you can change the angle you shoot or the time of day to avoid the specular highlights on the right side of the photo. To my eye, they seem to compete for my attention and draw eyes away from the subject. You might also be able to eliminate a little of it by shooting from a little higher angle too.
I know you didn't ask for comments about the pose, but this particular pose just emphasizes too much thigh and makes it look disproportionate.
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