What are your favourite lighting setups for beauty? I am tempted to do BD as key light with grid and then 10" reflectors with grids for side light and then a white reflector to bounce light under the nose. And maybe one light with a snoot.

Thoughts?

Why? What is the purpose of each of those lights? I always tweak a little bit when I see people describing a lighting setup based on the equipment they want to use, rather than the purpose of any individual light or technique. What look are you going for? What's your personal shooting style? What emotion, aesthetic, palette of colors and textures and tones are you planning on employing?

You know Simon, that's your problem. Everything always has to have a reason! Why this light? Why that light? For what effect? What are you trying to do - make us think it out and be responsible for the results? Make us actually learn to use the lights rather than just follow a recipe?

Good advice. Next piece (and about the only thing I can add) is usually the fewer lights to achieve the effect you want, the better.

Peace,

Todd

shatterkiss wrote:
Why? What is the purpose of each of those lights? I always tweak a little bit when I see people describing a lighting setup based on the equipment they want to use, rather than the purpose of any individual light or technique. What look are you going for? What's your personal shooting style? What emotion, aesthetic, palette of colors and textures and tones are you planning on employing?

+1Billion

Todd Warnke wrote:
You know Simon, that's your problem. Everything always has to have a reason! Why this light? Why that light? For what effect? What are you trying to do - make us think it out and be responsible for the results? Make us actually learn to use the lights rather than just follow a recipe?

Damn me for asking the hard questions!

Next piece (and about the only thing I can add) is usually the fewer lights to achieve the effect you want, the better.

That's always a really good point. People, myself included, are always in such a rush to add another light, add another light, add another light...always forgetting that the difficulty of achieving a well-lit shot goes up dramatically for every light you add. Whenever I'm having trouble lighting something, or getting the look that I want, the first thing I do is strip away every light but one. Then I'll look at the frame, see where I'm missing light and how I might achieve that, then slowly and selectively start adding light back in. But you build a shot one light at a time, not jumping straight to four or five lights.

shatterkiss wrote:

Damn me for asking the hard questions!

Simon is a gadfly.

Careful though - do you remember what happened to that last guy who asked so many questions? What was his name - Socrates?

Though I think hemlock is somewhat out of fashion. Make him drink fixer!

I'm actually unclear about how to speak in these terms. I'm not saying I disagree - in fact, I think I agree. I'm just out of my depth and trying to understand. Perhaps my speaking up and saying 'huh?' will help show that, while I've spent a couple years now trying to learn enough about photography to not feel like a sham when I refer to myself as a 'photographer', I'm still a bit at a loss here.

So looking at the questions:

1) What look are you going for? - I think this is the easiest of the questions to answer for we noobs. Generally (at least for me) I think we are going for either something established and we're referencing (ie, early 80s Gucci ads, or commercial cosmetic ad look, or dark and mysterious. That, or the answer is 'Something different!' - which I find most often means the photographer hasn't really thought it out (though in rare cases of brillians, it means the photographer is gifted and can genuinely create something fresh... I don't fit that at all).

2) What's your personal shooting style? - I have no idea how to answer this for myself. Honestly, I don't know what my style is, but when I start getting a glimmer of a style, I generally try to change things up. I don't think I've hit on anything so great and original that I could stick with it or have people ID it as 'Brent', so until that unlikely day, I hope I can keep diverse...

3) What emotion, aesthetic, palette of colors and textures and tones are you planning on employing? - Emotion I might be able to ID before I start - but often I'll go for something altogether different after 5 minutes of shooting. What aesthetic am I looking for? Often I have no clue, or at least, I'm not certain that the pre-shoot idea will follow through. Probably a terrible failing on my part. Tones? Textures? Damn, it's often hard enough to get my lights looking halfway decent, and finding something that the model brought along that doesn't look horrible on camera.

Anyway, perhaps I do more of this than I realize, or perhaps I'm just a lot out to lunch - but if anyone can give a more descriptive outline of how it goes, and the thought processes behind the choices made, it would be quite helpful.

B

mmurph wrote:
Careful though - do you remember what happened to that last guy who asked so many questions?

His wife got outed as a spy?

I think the most important question to ask is: "How do you want the viewer to react emotionally to the image?"

To anticipate emotional reaction its necessary to be consciously aware of how humans react subconsciously to visual images and how seeing things in a photo affects perception differently than seeing the same scene in person. The way the shape of objects and faces in photos is identified by the contrast pattern the highlights and shadows create is subconscious process learned in infancy playing with ball and blocks. Ironically its such a subconscious process that photographers struggle a great deal with how to place lights to define shape and texture. The answers are right in front of your nose if you stop and think about how you react emotionally, and what about the pose and lighting caused that reaction.

Accomplishing and goal -- such as creating a specific emotional reaction -- requires having a some criteria to measure success or failure. For example, as a starting baseline make a list of all the general characteristics of an effective and flattering conventional portrait:

Combination of angle and lighting which makes face look slim and symmetrical
Light in both eyes and mouth
No distracting nose shadows or nostrils visible
Front of face contrast most with background
No distractions from clothing or props
Eye and shoulder lines angled (i.e. non static)

That checklist allows you to understand, on a conscious level, all the things the brain of the viewer will be reacting to subconsciously. For example whether or not there is light in the eyes and a long dark distracting nose shadow have a huge bearing on how attractive a person looks in a photo.

That's just the criteria for a conventional flattering portrait. You can also develop your own criteria for moody, creepy, sexy, sullen, somber, etc. Just the act of looking at a photo which evokes that emotion in your brain and then sitting down and cataloging the characteristic of the lighting, pose and expression which caused it will put you in touch on a conscious level with how the brain reacts subconsciously. Once you get to that point knowing how to create lighting which is conventionally flattering moody, creepy, sexy, sullen, somber, etc. is much easier.

At the same time you work to understand the emotional aspects of how to employ the tools its necessary to understand how the tools work. The simplest way to do that is to have a standard test scene like mannequin head which the only variables are the modifier on the light, the angle of the light, and the distance so the results are easily compared. In the case of the tools the differences can be quantified on the basis how wide or narrow a cone of light they project (which predicts both fall-off and diffusion) and the characteristics of the reflections they create (specular or non-specular highlights).

Once you know how the tools work its possible to look at a photo you react to a specific why and understand on one level how the tools were employed to create the reaction, and what role the characteristics of the tool played in creating that reaction. For example, in the case of a beauty dish its design allows it to be used very close to create diffuse lighting with rapid fall-off in an full face pose without blowing out the closer forehead. Whether or not a "sock" is used on it will affect how specular the reflections on the skin are.

splitfyre wrote:
What are your favourite lighting setups for beauty? I am tempted to do BD as key light with grid and then 10" reflectors with grids for side light and then a white reflector to bounce light under the nose. And maybe one light with a snoot.

Thoughts?


It's seems this topic has gotten very philosophical. That sounds like a good start. That's what most people need before they can start experimenting. The only problem with that setup is the reflector. With a gridded beauty dish I don't think you're going to get enough stray light on the reflector to do any good. I would say a basic clamshell is the best start. Beauty dish on top. Relfector or softbox below. Then move those lights up and down with varying power before you start playing with kickers. They'll only make it harder to see what's going on with the key.

Make him drink fixer!

Is that supposed to be bad? I don't recall drinking fixer as being bad. Kinda liked it, actually. Sort of like a margarita without the ice and without the lime. What are those loony environmentalists now saying that drinking fixer is bad for you?