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This lighting technique involves 3 strobes, two on either side of the subject and slightly behind them, and then one light up front as key. Generally the sidelights, also called "kickers" or "rim lights", should be about a stop and a half hotter than your key light (having a light meter is very handy in these types of situations-- I use a Sekonic L-358). It's a very dramatic, contrasty kind of lighting that is very popular these days, and I think it's a good technique to have in your back pocket alongside your usual setups. Now, bear in mind that I wasn't exactly shooting for portfolio-worthy images here-- I was merely experimenting with a new lighting technique....so don't start playa hatin'. ;-)
Anyway, so I shot this with three Alien Bees B1600 strobes. The two in back were fitted with their standard 7" reflectors along with a set of barn doors to help control the spread of light. I could have just as easily used gridspots instead of barn doors (which I'll try next time), or gone with the 7" reflectors by themselves, but this time around I just happened to have the barn doors attached. The key light was fitted with a 16" beauty dish and a diffusion sock.
Here's a setup shot showing all 3 strobes firing (again, this isn't portfolio-worthy stuff.....I'm sure you'll be quick to notice that this shoot took place right in my back yard. Hey- I said no hatin'!!):
Now bear in mind that this was just before 5PM Eastern, so the direct sun was still blazing. In order to overpower the sun and produce the effect you see (which looks more like 7:30PM), I had to put my 2 rear strobes on pretty much full power. That's the beauty of shooting with high-powered strobes-- you have maximum control over the light in any given situation. Now, if I had Elinchrom Rangers instead of Alien Bees, I could make daytime look like midnight....pretty dang cool. Maybe one day I'll be cool (and rich) enough to be able to drop several grand on a strobe setup. But until then, it's okay to dream, right?
So anyway, that's pretty much all you gotta do....set up your lights, adjust the ratio so that your kicker lights are about a stop and a half hotter than your key, use your light meter to determine the appropriate shooting aperture, put your camera on Manual, and go to town. Below is the effect you'll get (notice the "rim" light on the edge, which really helps separate him from the background, and the hard light on his cheeks that really gives kind of a sculpted/chiseled appearance). If you have any questions, or would like some pointers on where to find great lighting information on the Net, please leave a comment or drop me an email.
PS - no, this wasn't edited in the slightest, and yes I need to clean my sensor. ;-)
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4 comments:
Question: Why did you not blur out the bg with some nice bokeh?
Question:Was the bg necessary for this shot?
Question: You have some shadows on the ground to the model's right. Is that intentional? is it desirable?
Question: What about the dark patch behind the model's posterior?
You mention that you have a sensor to clean. is that so evident in the pics above? I tried looking and couldn't find any specks :(.
Sorry for being a nag with so many questions. Please ignore if am being an irritant.
@ LIFE_REFACTORED:
First of all, thanks for asking your questions...I'll be there were several other people who were wondering the same things as you, but only you took the time to respond. So thank you!
Regarding the background, there are two reasons why it is not blurred:
(1) I simply wasn't concerned about it during this shoot, because I was only focused on the lighting technique being used to illuminate my subject.
(2) The maximum "sync speed" on my Canon 1Ds Mark II is 1/200 of a second. This means that I cannot select a shutter speed faster than 1/200, or my flashes will not fully illuminate the entire frame. So in order to overpower the sun with my strobes and still get a proper exposure, I need to be shooting at 1/200 and a very small aperture. In this case I was at f16, which is why I have lots of depth of field. I'm not sure what your experience level with off-camera flash is, but generally speaking, aperture controls the flash exposure and shutter speed controls the ambient exposure. So the bottom line is that a sync speed of 1/200 imposes fairly strict limits on what you can do with depth of field (aperture).
The shadows and dark patch on the ground would be bothersome to me if I were trying to make a photo that I cared about, but again I was only concerned with the lighting in this case.
I mentioned that my sensor needs cleaning because if you look closely at the sky, you will see several dark spots, which are caused by dust on my sensor. This is one drawback to having a slightly older camera, as they don't have automatic sensor cleaning like the newer ones do.
lastly, you are not being a nag at all....I truly appreciate you taking the time to ask questions. That's why I created this blog-- to hopefully share a thing or two with photographers who may just be starting out. I had to learn all this stuff completely on my own without any mentors or anything, so I'm just trying to help any of my readers who may be in similar situations. If you find any of this stuff helpful, then it's completely worth it to me to take the time to post. Thanks again for your comments & questions.
Thanks for taking time to respond. Very informative answers and am learning a lot. As for answer 2, the moment i read it, i felt like a complete idiot(I had one of those moments where you knew the answer the second you read the first few words and you were kicking yourself for not realizing it in the first place) as I forgot the simple fact that you were working in bright daylight
As a hobbyist, for more than ten years I've been purely focusing on learning to work with just natural light. I'm soon hoping to graduate to flashes with the knowledge am gaining from wonderful folks out there like yourself.
Thanks again
@ LIFE_REFACTORED: I am always more than happy to provide as much explanation as needed, so I'm glad everything's clear now. Even though you quickly realized the answer to your own question, it never hurts to provide a few extra details for those who may not have as much knowledge as you when it comes to working with flash. Do you think it might be helpful for me to start a series of posts specifically on off-camera flash? If not, do you have any other ideas for topics that you think might be particularly informative?
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