Halley's soft focus head portrait

[reval8r]

Hello,
I done a portrait session with a college student that want some pix to bring home to her parents during spring break. This is one of the images she choose. I recently purchased some studio lighting from Alien Bees and was excited about getting an opportunity to give the lights another run.

There are 3 lights used in the image. An ABR800 ringlight with the moon and stars mask (check out the catchlight in the eyes) was the key about 45 degrees from camera left and 45 degrees above her head. A second light was next to camera on right side with a 48 umbrella for fill. The third light was about 15 degrees behind subject with a stipbox and grid to seperate her from the background. Mainlight was at f8, fill-light 5.6 and accent light f8.

C&C welcome,
Larry

http://www.astonishingportraits.com/picts/halley0053web.jpg

[LensBaby]

Thats beautiful! I have the Alien Bee digi bee set, and I love it. I am going to have to get the medium softbox with the ringflash next though. I just have the shoot through umbrella at this point, but the school that I am going to attend requires this for one of the classes.

[jerryph]

That turned out really nicely!

You just have to be careful to not place the keylight too high/close else you start to get shadows under the eyes. Either pull back 1-2 feet or drop down about a foot. Also, camea left... drop it down a stop or so, to make a soft shadow on her right side of the face for more dramatic effect.

Have you visited www.strobist.com lately? Some incredible ideas there. ;)

[reval8r]

Thanks for the comments guys.

Lensbaby, I love to shoot with umbrellas. I currently have 4 B800's, a B1600, and the ringflash. I have octaboxes and softboxes, but often like to use a B800 with umbrella for the main, a reflector for fill and another light for seperating the subject and background. Most of my portraits are done on location, so I choose to use the minimium of equipment.

Thanks for tips jerryph. For this session I choice to use a ratio of about 2:1. I generally like 2:1 or 3:1 for ladies and 3:1 or 4:1 for the gents. I use the catch lights from the main light to help determine the height of the mainlight. I like the mainlight catch to be in the 10-11 o'clock range or the 1-2 o'clock depending on the side the main is used. Generally, I like to take out the second catch from the fill, but this time left it in.

Larry