The New Model and the Beauty Dish

I had a new model in the studio today for a quick portfolio package shoot. She really as yet has no clue what she is doing but as such is quite open to learning. At the end of the session I switched away from the typical commercial beauty and glamour looks we provide for portfolios and set up a single 16" beauty dish on a boom arm, added a 20 degree grid and proceeded to just play with her and the light.

Not my favorite of the set just one pulled out randomly to test process. Had I looked closer before starting I would have picked a different shot from the series as the hooded eye is bugging the heck out of me

Hi Bobby,

Thanks for sharing this random pick choice your series. I like the dramatic look in B&W. The addition of the grid in the beauty dish defines the light well, but then the edges as they fall off have a dramatic look. I really like the single braid of her hair and wonder if you have a shot where it can be seen in toto as it gives character to her style and nature. I see you have used a narrow DOF. The right arm then suffers. I am not worried about the eyes at all.

The dish seems to be low and aiming upwards and that surprised me. BTW I cannot find any shot details in the EXIF but it's good to see you embed your © info!

Asher

Thanks Asher, actually the dish was raked off hard to camera right about 20 degrees to the model and set just above the models eye level to center the cirle of light on her face. It was attached to a Calumet Travelite 750 and placed back about 12' from the model

Not sure why all the EXIF is not showing up but here is a screen shot of it from the NEF file


D300
ISO 100 (Lo 1)
f/5.0
1/100


I shoot everything in Raw + JPG Fine and normally only edit from the NEF file but in this case since I was just exploring the shoot and doing a quick edit I worked from the JPG.

I am sure there is a shot of the whole braid I will look and see what I have

I really think your lighting in this is very thoughtful and well-designed. It would be very easy to lose definition on curves around the model's neck and across the bottom part of the frame, on her attire, but you've kept a lot of definition and contrast while, at the same time, making sure that everything that should appear as smooth and, for lack of better words, youthful as possible remained that way. How much of the appearance was done in-camera and how much, if any, was post?

Charles House said:

I really think your lighting in this is very thoughtful and well-designed. It would be very easy to lose definition on curves around the model's neck and across the bottom part of the frame, on her attire, but you've kept a lot of definition and contrast while, at the same time, making sure that everything that should appear as smooth and, for lack of better words, youthful as possible remained that way. How much of the appearance was done in-camera and how much, if any, was post?

Click to expand...

Thanks Charles, this image is pretty much a simple gradient mapped b&w conversion the lighting in the color version is pretty much the lighting in the B&W

I like the image