In The Studio

    A couple of weeks ago my good friend Cameron came over to my place for some instruction on how to shoot different studio lighting techniques on a model.  He is competing in the Skills USA program under the photography category.
     This presented a bit of a challenge for me as I had a hard time rounding up a model.  I called all over the place and found my good friend Sarah willing to stand in for us.  Below are some of the shots that I took during our session.
     Sarah was easy to work with and we quickly had a number of great shots to add to our quiver for our editing session later on.  Special thanks to Sarah for coming over on short notice and spending a couple of hours with us while the tutoring session commenced!

      This first shot was done by Cameron and displays a good example of butterfly lighting.  This was actually shot as we were experimenting with the lighting intensities.  Sometimes the best shots just "happen".

      In this shot I used the 45° lighting technique with a hair light above and behind our model.  I also used a sidelight at 2 stops below the key light 90° to the model's left side.

     Here, I used a 50mm lens at f5.6 and a single light butterfly technique with a soft 48" reflector panel laying on Sarah's lap to add a bit more luminance under the chin and on the chest.

     Finally, a single light butterfly technique was used here to show the difference between using a reflector panel and not using one.  In this image the model's neck and lower face shadows are deeper, thus creating more contrast in the composition.  Sarah's pose is also more direct and upright adding strength and poise to the composition.


     We had a lot of fun shooting these images and hope you enjoy them.  To see more photos from Cameron, you can link to his blog from this page at the top right under "The Up and Coming".