Studio Photography Brief

I have to say I've enjoyed this part of the L3 course but it also requires patience. It takes up a lot of time setting up lighting, choosing the subject and positioning them/it in the best way to take advantage of the lighting and props used.
My first submission is High-Key Lighting, essentially this type of photography aims to light a object or the sitter with plenty of light to the front and rear but still keeping essential detail of the subject. Ideally several flash units should be used. A white backdrop is normally used with a dedicated flash head for background exposure whilst the subject is lit by either two flash units lit from a 45degree angle or one at 90 degree to the subject giving a well lit image with no shadows although shadows can still look good in High Key, there are no rules!
 Below I've included a typical High-Key lighting setup but this is is only a guide, experimenting can give you better results.

The image below is a studio shot I took of Pat, my willing volunteer for the day. Using a similar setup as the one above her face is lit up from both sides using flash strobes with soft boxes, the rear backdrop is also lit with direct flash with no diffuser.

As you can see Pat is well lit from all angles and there's little in the way of shadows, I think the shadows around the eyes neck and nose are important otherwise the image could look blown out instead I've kept important feature definition and detail.

Low-Key Photography.

Low-key photography is nearly negative or reverse of Hi-key, also known as Film Noir, this type of photography concentrates on a very dark images at the same time keeping the subject well or partially exposed. At a lighting point of view the back drop is black or a dark colour, the subject is usually lit from one side sometimes with a reflector to include extra highlights.

My Low-Key image is of a chrysanthemum, white always works well on a black background giving greater depth an clarity. The flower was lit by a single flash strobe with no diffuser. White on black gives great results. The light shows up the detail and the shadows give the flower depth.

Product or Commercial Photography.

My next challenge was photographing a object for commercial purposes of which the studio had a predetermined lighting setup by John and the subject was jewellery. The ideal setup is a well lit product, although this depends on what your photographing, some sort of background and maybe a prop to go with the product, in my case below a piece of granite but first I've included a typical lighting setup for commercial photography.

In the image below I've included a typical lighting setup as above but I haven't included the beauty dish. I did include a reflector to bounce light off the front but kept the two rear flashes to give an even base for the subject.

My next image is another commercial image setup by John. This time the product was placed on perspex to allow lighting from underneath and also to include a background perspective from below which was lit by a honeycomb filter, the rest of the set was lit in the same way as the jewelery shot. Post processing was done with Photoshop© and Perfect Effects©.

I've chose another commercial image because, frankly, I got what I thought were good results. My third image was done in the studio but in this case it was setup by myself with a single flash head, situated at quite a high elevation pointing straight on to the subject, I was shooting from quite a distance away giving my a large frame to include text. I think the lighting suits the subject and the company, I've also noticed that a lot of selling techniques for products today have a lot of black in their images so I thought I would give my interpretation of it. (Other training shoe companies are also available!)

My last studio image submission is flowers, this was quite easy lighting, which included a single flash head, the background was neutral just so I had more flexibility for post processing of which I've done to the image below of which I've also included a texture.

The last duo of images in this blog contain a instructional image and the image I shot at home.
This was my attempt at a home portrait, my wife Louise, by using off camera flash, which basically means the use of a flashgun that is not mounted on the camera taking the image, as the image shows below, except in my case there was no cable connecting the camera to the flash, instead it was synced to my cameras internal flash.

Now as most photographers know this can cause problems if you don't want the camera flash to expose the image or at least reduce it. So what I did was I set my flash exposure to 1/2  setting, placed the off camera flash 90 degree to the left of Louise and with a piece of white card directed the flash up to the ceiling triggering the external flash but not over exposing with the camera flash. I know it would have been easier with a sync lead but I didn't have one so I just made do. I'm happy with the end result and so is Louise!

 Summary:

Although this has been the most challenging assignment so far, I've learned a lot, I could waffle on about exposure, aperture and white balance but at the end of the day it's experimental and not an exact science, there are all sorts of things that influence a studio shoot whether its heating, lighting or even the mood of people you shoot, take it as it comes and react to the situation, to me it's been an exciting challenge!


                                                            Sean Wareing 2013 ©