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Archive 2015 · Old school style lighting

  
 
jcolman
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Old school style lighting


I played around with some old style glamor techniques. I want to try this with a bride.

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This pic hasn't been PS's yet
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Jul 16, 2015 at 03:26 PM
amonline
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Old school style lighting


The massive skin smoothing and or clarity really ruin them for me. If you want to take that route, you should learn the frequency separation technique.


Jul 16, 2015 at 03:56 PM
jcolman
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Old school style lighting


amonline wrote:
The massive skin smoothing and or clarity really ruin them for me. If you want to take that route, you should learn the frequency separation technique.


The point was to smooth the heck out of her skin to replicate an old glamor style. But I will look into frequency separation.

I use pro retouch on her skin. Usually I will dial it back to 50% but this time I went with 100%. The last photo had no retouching done to it.




Jul 16, 2015 at 03:58 PM
jmraso
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Old school style lighting


so the topic is about lighting or skin retouching ?


Jul 16, 2015 at 04:46 PM
LeeSimms
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Old school style lighting


Monty lives


Jul 16, 2015 at 05:03 PM
jcolman
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Old school style lighting


jmraso wrote:
so the topic is about lighting or skin retouching ?


It's about shape shifting morphing brides.




Jul 16, 2015 at 05:09 PM
rondphoto
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Old school style lighting


If you wanted to replicate an old glamour style, then you should have used a reflector at the bottom of the frame and a soft focus filter if you wanted to go the Glamour Shots route.


With all the time you spent smoothing the skin you should have removed the fly-aways.



Jul 16, 2015 at 05:29 PM
TTLKurtis
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Old school style lighting


I can see what you're going for, and you're in the right direction, but it's the last 10% of attention to detail that is making these fall short for me. Just not as flattering as you would expect from old Hollywood glamour. I'm guessing there is no fill card being used, which is probably a big part of it, but here are some specific areas I think you can work on for the next one:

1) The contrast is extremely high on this one and it sort of makes her look like you're going for a two-face sort of character. Look how much darker the right side of her face is, it's incredibly distracting particularly since it appears you brightened her face on the right side (left eye, cheek) substantially due to the sharp angle of your lighting and lack of bounce/fill.

2) The pose is weird, which I suppose is normal enough for Hollywood, but the lighting again could use some bounce/fill. Look at the shadow under her lip. It makes me think she has a dirty lower lip, there needs to be a more gradual fall-off of light on her face. If you're going for short-lighting, move that light further off to the side still so the shadows work for the image rather than just distract, but a bounce/fill for this type of work is pretty standard particularly for females.

3) Pretty close here but I think the light is perhaps still a bit too high - notice again the shadow under the bottom lip, and then the distracting fall-off on her arms which is so immediate.

4) Broken neck syndrome, and also watch for having the pupils way in the corner of the eyes like that, it looks really weird when 95% of what you see in the eye is whiteness. For this reason I try to instruct the subject to not look to the extremes of left/right and to look somewhere so that I can see white on either side of their pupil, even if it's just a hint. Pretty good rule of thumb, but I'm sure there are situations it doesn't apply like any rule.

Hope that's helpful - not saying I would have done better, but I would have given myself these same critiques for the next time. Keep experimenting, that's what keeps us improving after all.



Jul 16, 2015 at 05:31 PM
jcolman
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Old school style lighting


rondphoto wrote:
If you wanted to replicate an old glamour style, then you should have used a reflector at the bottom of the frame and a soft focus filter if you wanted to go the Glamour Shots route.

With all the time you spent smoothing the skin you should have removed the fly-aways.


Not all "old school hollywood" lighting techniques used reflectors. See below. I also have not owned a soft focus filter since the 1970's. As for fixing flyaways, yes, I could have taken the time to do so if this had a been a paying gig. These photos were done more as an exercise than anything else since I haven't shot this style for quite some time.

Some examples of what I was aiming for.









Jul 16, 2015 at 05:47 PM
jcolman
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Old school style lighting


Thanks Kurtis. Some helpful tips in your post. I purposely increased the contrast and lowered the black levels on all the photos to try to achieve the look I wanted.


Jul 16, 2015 at 05:48 PM
TTLKurtis
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Old school style lighting


The inspiration images are very flattering and more in line with what I think of when it comes to old Hollywood lighting. One other fundamental difference was that they were using big fresnel constant lights instead of flashes so what you see is what you get - a huge help, for sure, as model lights can be a bit on the wimpy side.

I think the broken neck issue stems from trying to replicate a look where the model appears to be laying on a couch glancing upwards where you have yours sitting and tilting her chin way up. Such small changes in posture and light position and power/intensity make huge differences when everything is added up.

Also the first and last image you can see they have the lighting perfectly perpendicular to the face which gives beautiful symmetrical lighting and avoids weird corner-of-lower-lip-shadows. The shadow under the nose does not extend to the upper lip as well, it only shadows the underside of the nose (an easy single thing to keep an eye on as you're judging position)

Study the inspiration images closely and try to figure out what they did differently.

If you can be objective looking at your own work (may require walking away from it and looking in a few days or weeks), I think you'll start noticing more of the specific differences. Try printing them out next to each other and casually comparing once in a while and write some notes down for what you would do differently.



Jul 16, 2015 at 05:56 PM
jcolman
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Old school style lighting


I actually used these "inspiration" photos while I was shooting but, as you mentioned, it's difficult to recreate images when you don't have the same tools to use.

I also did not have my boom with me so I could not fly my key light directly over the model. I know....excuses....excuses.....

But you are correct about some other things. Thank you.

Here are a couple more that I have not edited yet.






Jul 16, 2015 at 06:06 PM
SloPhoto
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Old school style lighting


jcolman wrote:
Not all "old school hollywood" lighting techniques used reflectors. See below. I also have not owned a soft focus filter since the 1970's. As for fixing flyaways, yes, I could have taken the time to do so if this had a been a paying gig. These photos were done more as an exercise than anything else since I haven't shot this style for quite some time.

Some examples of what I was aiming for.

http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x148/jcolman_photo/a3da2bdfa3399769d58e75a7bd002970_zpswp4syllj.jpg

http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x148/jcolman_photo/7ff0926ba1ef76b82c8a4d30eb1a2f18_zpsgvsacgr0.gif

http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x148/jcolman_photo/old-movie_zpsadbupuhk.jpg


all of those are simple clamshell lighting, while your first few are more loop style, and could use some serious fill.

It also looks like you could use some bigger lights if that is the look you want to reproduce.



Jul 16, 2015 at 08:23 PM
jcolman
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Old school style lighting


SloPhoto wrote:
all of those are simple clamshell lighting, while your first few are more loop style, and could use some serious fill.

It also looks like you could use some bigger lights if that is the look you want to reproduce.


I typically do use fill, usually a white or silver reflector. But, as I said, I wanted to try a different approach. If I had a 2k or 5k Matthews fresnel, I would have used it. But I didn't. I used what was at hand, which was my Photogenic lights. Plus I did not have my boom available to fly my key light over the model. Again....excuses, excuses.

The whole purpose of this session was to try to emulate some old style lighting techniques with the tools I had on hand to see if this might be a technique I can use for bridals. I still have a lot of practice ahead of me before I'm comfortable with doing this style.

I guess I need to put disclaimers on my posts from now on.



Jul 16, 2015 at 09:04 PM
TTLKurtis
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Old school style lighting


Yeah what size modifier are you using there, looks like a rather small octa I'm guessing on the cheetah lights? Using a 5' octa box on a real studio light will make a big difference. Even a 3' octa.


Jul 16, 2015 at 09:49 PM
BSPhotog
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Old school style lighting


My first thought was bigger modifier. I dig the light that you came up with and I am not bothered by the images differing from the inspiration you were looking at. Good stuff for sure, I'm a fan of the simpler setup without fill personally.


Jul 16, 2015 at 09:55 PM
jcolman
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · Old school style lighting


TTLKurtis wrote:
Yeah what size modifier are you using there, looks like a rather small octa I'm guessing on the cheetah lights? Using a 5' octa box on a real studio light will make a big difference. Even a 3' octa.


I used a 3' octa on #1 & 2 and a bare reflector with a grid on #3 & 4 as my key light. The lights are Photogenic monolights. The hair light and background lights were also Photogenic lights with reflectors with grids.

If you look close at her eyes in 1 & 2 you'll see the octa box reflection.

On the other pics I posted I used a bare reflector with grid as the key light.

I should point out that this whole exercise was more about shadows, contrast and posing than anything else. I normally favor large soft boxes for portraits but wanted to try something different.

Here is a BTS shot of one of the setups. Not a whole lot of room to work between the pool table, sofa and video game console.




Jul 16, 2015 at 10:21 PM
Chris Fawkes
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · Old school style lighting


I think a smaller light source would serve you better for these. They are in the ballpark, the contrast seems right but the shadow transition in the example shots are not as soft as yours. Maybe replace the softbox with a grid


Jul 16, 2015 at 11:38 PM
TTLKurtis
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · Old school style lighting


Chris Fawkes wrote:
I think a smaller light source would serve you better for these. They are in the ballpark, the contrast seems right but the shadow transition in the example shots are not as soft as yours. Maybe replace the softbox with a grid



Gridded beauty dish would be nice and have a similar effect to a fresnel. Minus the WYSIWYG benefits.



Jul 16, 2015 at 11:43 PM
jcolman
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · Old school style lighting


Chris Fawkes wrote:
I think a smaller light source would serve you better for these. They are in the ballpark, the contrast seems right but the shadow transition in the example shots are not as soft as yours. Maybe replace the softbox with a grid


I did use a gridded reflector on half of the photos.




Jul 17, 2015 at 08:13 AM
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