Improvisational studio!

schmoo

Been playing around with the idea of having a simple studio setup at home, and even though what I've got is pretty jury-rigged, it was a lot of fun. I have limited experience with all things light-related so this was a big project of mine.











Skin tones OK? Backdrop too distracting? I couldn't stop the lens down enough to get it blurred, or back up further because of the length of the room. But still opinions/advice/constructive criticism is welcome!

Frog Lady

hey schmoo - looks like you had fun on this shoot! I really like some of the creative poses. Nice job!

I can't comment on the skin tones, but the backdrop is definately noticable (in a not so good way) particularly in the last shot (and to some degree, but not as bad, on the 2nd and 3rd shots. I wonder if you could blur it in PS

C.

gmonkeh

shots look good to me, lighting looks good. Background is an easy fix, with some levels correction to make it pure white and some masking.

System

love the color comp exposure pose of the first one-

the mask thing?-

well, whatever-

the backdrop in the last one, is, well----



cool

saurora

Looks like you had fun! I particularly like #3 and #1, in that order. Like others have said, you can polish up the backgrounds. Keep it up!!!

Rhuarc

Nice shots! Really like the lighting and tones. What type of jury rigged setupa re you using? I'm looking to set up a jury rigged studio sometime and am wondering what you use.

schmoo

Thanks! As for props (like the mask) I had no ideas in mind as this was pretty much just two good friends volunteering to help me out while I figured out the basics of studio setups and lighting. They were paid in bagels and OJ. One of them had the mask in her bag from a masquerade event the night before. As you can see wardrobe wasn't even considered as she's in a t-shirt!

My setup consisted of lots of soft natural light from two big windows behind me (facing south, so indirect), a backdrop stand that my husband constructed for me that worked very well, a dropcloth and a 580EX flash that I bounced off the walls to get the shadows. That's it. I wouldn't mind having real lamps perhaps, but currently I don't have any plans to do enough studio work to really justify it.

Oh and I was very inspired by gmonkeh's recent beautifully minimalized studio work.

As for cleaning up the backdrop... are we talking about Andy's handy-dandy white background tutorial?

gmonkeh

Oh and I was very inspired by gmonkeh's recent beautifully minimalized studio work.

As for cleaning up the backdrop... are we talking about Andy's handy-dandy white background tutorial?

Well thank you, that's really nice to hear Yeah Andy's tute is perfect. But first you have to clone out the creases and other stuff from the background. Make sure you use a soft low opacity (around 25%) clone brush. And just do a few passes. Using low opacity allows for a more subtle clone job.

Lex