Lighting in my lounge

El Kiwi

I've recently been totally inspired by a few people, but especially Jeff Baumung. I love his portrait series, and his concert shots are amazing too. I'd like to do some portraits, maybe even a series like that of my friends, so I figured it's time to learn some lighting and how my flash actually works. After a bit of playing around, I came up with this:



Any suggestions for ways to improve the lighting gratefully received. Thanks for looking!

christulk

I like it! Only very small point is a few stray hairs on the left side of the image.

Looks good.

System

like it!-

lot of stuff on the forum here re lighting, setup, flash-

try the search-

saurora

I like this alot! So....what kind of light(s) do you have and how did you set this up???

Mr. 2H2O

I think you're on the right track with the concept for the lighting but its still too hot on the bridge of your nose, your cheek, and your ear lobe.

For something really cheap, try hanging a white bed sheet between you and the flash and crank up the flash power two stops. See if that helps create a more even lighting effect.

Mike

El Kiwi

Mr. 2H2O wrote:

I think you're on the right track with the concept for the lighting but its still too hot on the bridge of your nose, your cheek, and your ear lobe.

So when you say it's too hot at these points, is that because the light is not diffuse enough? i.e. it's creating specular highlights?

Mr. 2H2O wrote:

For something really cheap, try hanging a white bed sheet between you and the flash and crank up the flash power two stops. See if that helps create a more even lighting effect.

Really cheap - sounds like me! I'll give this a go - one problem is I'm pretty much limited to having the flash on-camera till I get anything more sophisticated.

saurora wrote:

I like this alot! So....what kind of light(s) do you have and how did you set this up???

Thanks! I have to admit this is pretty ghetto. My living room has two spots, there's one just in front of me and off to the left facing in the direction I'm looking, probably bouncing a bit of fill on the left of my face. I also have an Ikea lamp to the right, it's a tall column lamp with 3 bulbs with a paper shade - it actually gives pretty nice diffuse light. Then the camera is on a tripod with the flash facing right, bounced backwards at about 45 degrees - I wanted most of the light on the right side. The bulbs I use are all energy savers, but the light is definitely a bit yellow, I doubt I could use it for colour shots.

Thanks for all the comments guys, I need to play around some more after Christmas!