1/160 s at f/5.6, ISO 160, 100 mm

The key (main light) for these shots was a 600 Ws strobe with the Beauty Dish and a honeycomb grid, placed on a boom frontally and overhead, approximately 4 feet away from the model. There is something magical about a Beauty Dish – it gives light which is not really soft, not really hard, yet focused, edgy and “three-dimensional”. It is a distinct look, different from what can be achieved with a softbox or with an umbrella.

The grid tightened the beam of light and added some contrast and drama to the look. I also used a small white reflector, camera left, for just a touch of fill light. There is a big light falloff from the Beauty Dish but I actually like it in these shots.

1/160 s at f/5.6, ISO 200, 105 mm

A white seamless paper background helped me draw attention to the model. To eliminate any texture and shades of gray from the background I illuminated it evenly with two hot shoe flashes set to 24 mm zoom and sitting in two 43″ silver umbrellas (I chose small flashes mainly for portability, though more powerful lights would let me shoot at a higher aperture / lower ISO). All the flashes were set in manual mode and fired with PocketWizard radio triggers.

1/160 s, f/5.0 ISO 250, 120 mm

My camera settings killed the ambient leaving me only with the light which I controlled. I adjusted the background lights until I was seeing a spike in the whites region of the histogram on my camera, and the key light simply until I was happy with the results – maybe a third of a stop more than for a typical portrait.

1/160 s at f/5.6, ISO 160, 95 mm

In case you are wondering how much post-processing I did, below is the first shot right from the camera (a preview of a completely unedited RAW image after importing to Lightroom).

Unprocessed image

Unlike this RAW preview from Lightroom, a JPEG preview at the back of my camera was already contrasty and sharpened by the ?Standard? Picture Style (in-camera Styles do not affect RAW images and only get baked into JPEGs). But I prefer to take things in my hands and adjust the settings to taste.

So I pushed the whites a bit until the background was pure white, tweaked the tonal curve for a better contrast, added a pinch of clarity and sharpening, and slightly desaturated the skin. Oh, and I removed that reflector.

The Beauty Dish with a grid and the white seamless background were my primary tools for achieving this look. Previously I used a Beauty Dish in a different setup for overpowering the sun. Be sure to check out that post!

'Lit with a Beauty Dish

The post Lit with a Beauty Dish first appeared on TomOnTheRoof Photography Blog.

Final image; 1/200 s, f/5.6, ISO 100, ND4, polarizer, 24 mm

I shot these images with the Canon 5D mark II using the EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens at its widest zoom setting. On a full frame sensor 24 mm is about as wide as I can accept for photographing people without distorting them too much. I love this lens for it’s great contrast and color. It is tack sharp when stopped down and very sharp when wide open.

Step 1

This is how the scene actually appeared on a sunny afternoon, shot at 1/200 s, which is my sync speed, ISO 100, f/4, and with an ND4 filter. I could have shot it at f/8 but I traded two stops of aperture (f/8 ? f/5.6 ? f/4) for the ND4 filter. This gave me an identical ‘proper’ exposure but with a more shallow depth of field as an artistic decision. You can see a hard shadow at the side of the car coming from the sun and overall the image is not appealing. Notice that I am shooting with the sun behind me and slightly to my side. Had I shot straight into the sun the sky would have been less saturated.

Step 2

I stopped down the aperture to f/5.6, i.e. by a stop, to underexpose the foreground and darken the sky. I also stacked a polarizing filter to further darken the scene by approximately 2/3 of a stop and to cut down the glare and saturate the colors just a tad more. The sky looked good at this point but the side of the car was lost in the deep shadow. These images are basically straight out of the camera.

Step 3

To open up this shadow and to bring out the side of the car from the dark I added a Nikon SB-24 hot shoe flash pointed at the car, camera right and just outside of the frame, set to full power and fired with a Pocket Wizard. This added depth and dimension to the car.

Step 4

To light the scene and the subjects I used a 600 Ws strobe set to full power, with a 22″ (55 cm) white Beauty Dish as my main light. It was positioned just outside of the frame, camera left, in front of and above the car, pointed slightly down and fired with a Pocket Wizard. Notice that I pulled in the camera to exaggerate the wide angle perspective. The battery pack of my strobe run down, so I powered it from the battery of the car (hence the cable visible at the side of the car). The final image was retouched and post-processed of course.

And here is my second favorite shot from the day:

Final image; 1/125 s, f/4, ISO 100, ND8, polarizer, 24 mm

Without flash

This is a shot without flash. I deliberately underexposed the image to darken the sky and make it more dramatic. The ND8 filter allowed me to open up the aperture for a more shallow depth of field and even shoot at a slightly slower shutter speed to convey the motion of the barley in the wind. There is some darkening of the corners resulting from stacking of the filters on a wide angle lens, which I had to take care of later in post-production.

With flash

Here the scene is lit with a 600 Ws flash set to full power, with a 22″ (55 cm) white Beauty Dish, same settings as above. The Beauty Dish is my most efficient modifier, yet it gives a quality of light which I love (especially when used at a short distance, as described in my post on lighting with a Beauty Dish).

The lighting made the subject pop and also brightened the foreground. Additionally, I cross-lit the subject with a gridded off-camera hot shoe flash (the SB-24 at full power with a Honl 1/8″ grid) to give detail to the veil. In summary, by darkening the sky and lighting the foreground I compressed the broad dynamic range of the original scene. Again, the final image was retouched and post-processed.

Because of the sweeping perspective which I wanted to capture the light could not be positioned really close to the subjects. It would be difficult to pull out these shots with just small hot shoe flashes unless it was dusk or I would have to place the main light closer and clone it out in post.

Do you know of other techniques for overpowering the sun? Let me know.

'Overpowering the Sun

The post Overpowering the Sun first appeared on TomOnTheRoof Photography Blog.