February 9th, 2010 Photo Blog 017 – My first strobist portraits

Well its been long enough, but I eventually got myself a couple of flash units, light stands and umbrellas so that I could try my hand at some strobist-style photography.

I went the budget route, getting a couple of Cactus KF36 flashes and some cactus v4 wireless triggers from gadgetinfinity.com and then a couple of light stands and shoot-through umbrellas from my local camera store. This I figured would give me the basic setup to get started playing around with light and seeing the effect that controlling it would have on my photo’s.

My first subject was, predictably, my girlfriend Sonia. I tried a handful of different lighting configurations and have uploaded some of the best results below.

The above photo was taken using the basic two light setup, the main flash high on camera left and fill on camera right. I didn’t make a note of the exact settings (which I know I will need to improve on if I am going to expect to join the ranks in the Flickr strobist group!), but I think main light was 1/4 power and fill was 1/16.  I bumped the exposure, adjusted the white balance and lowered the clarity in Lightroom.

I found this to be a very pleasing soft light ( the main was only just out of the frame) which wrapped around beautifully. If there was one thing that I did a little bit unorthodox in this setup it would be to have Sonia facing away from the main light. Still, it seemed to turn out nicely.

This shot was a bit more interesting, lighting-wise. I had the main light high on camera left and had a second flash behind Sonia firing back towards her. This gave the rim of light that you can see around some of the edges of her hair and arm, which is supposed to give extra pop and dimension to the subject and I have to say I quite like the effect. I probably had the backlight a bit too high as it is by no means subtle, but I suppose I will get better by trial and error eventually.

This shot was an attempt at some “clam shell” lighting, which is a technique where the main light is supposed to be straight above the camera and the fill is straight below. The two umbrellas are almost touching each other and I was shooting through the gap in between them. Due to the lack of space I couldn’t quite get the lights lining up exactly so as you can tell by the shadows on Sonia’s face I had the main slightly high and left and the fill low and camera right.  Anyway, the result was a rather pleasing softly lit headshot.

This shot I am just uploading because I like the composition – I cant actually remember the lighting for this image, I think it was the same as the first photo in this post.

As I have now experienced first hand (after reading so much about on the strobist.com blog), this whole lighting game does not have to be an exact science. Just follow a few simple rules along with a bit of trial and error until you get something you like. I can’t wait to start trying some outdoors strobism, I particularly like those shots where the ambient is underexposed one or two stops and then the subject is brought up to the correct exposure with flash. Depending on my success you may be reading about this soon!