Congratulations to friscoron for winning Feature Thread of the Week with 2 votes - View Previous Winners
Hi all. This is part of an artistic portrait offering I provide to dancers. When I shoot recital portraits and I have dozens of dancers going through my setup every hour, I have to put together a Circle K lighting setup with two lights lighting the background and providing some back lighting on the dancers, and two lights at 45 degrees providing a lighting zone for dancers in the setup. There's just no time to adjust the lighting for these types of shoots, and I prefer to shoot against white for these shots.
But what really need, and want -- whether they know it or not -- is artistic edgy lighting set against black marley flooring and a black backdrop. In this type of shoot, I average one shot every 7 minutes. So when I have a bunch of dancers coming through, they get three shots in 20 minutes. They show me what they're going to do, and then I create the lighting to show off their lines, their power, their beauty. Almost every shot has its own unique lighting.
In these types of shoots, I usually use three lights (Alienbees), with two of them being the big, gridded strip boxes. The third light is usually just that regular silver reflector with a 20 degree grid on it (or more or less, as needed).
I finally talked Ballet Chicago into letting me offer this to their summer intensive students, and it was a huge success.
Here are seven samples from the Ballet Chicago shoot. Comments welcome.
1. I've got the gridded strip box above her and to my right, pointing down so I could illuminate her face and then finger to finger across the arms. Other strip box is on the left providing the cross light. http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1923/31165267978_753ba864ea_b.jpg
3. Here I have the strip boxes across from her but slightly in front, as you can see the shadows farther back inside her legs. I wanted to outline her legs, upper body, and hair, but I didn't want nasty shadows across her face with her looking right at the camera. http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1942/31165265058_85542d1c5e_b.jpg
6. Pretty easy here. One strip box on camera left pointed at her face and along her body lines, one strip box behind her pointed right at her legs. I did have the gridded third light pointed either at her hand, or her lower leg. The gridded strip box would not have lit both. http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1956/44127270315_e1bb585b2d_b.jpg
7. Some might feel that I went too hot on her hair, but that was intentional. I wanted to bring as much attention to her hair as she receives with her body/pose. If I felt I could have pushed the contrast even more, I would've done it. One strip box camera left lighting up the front of her body. The other strip box, camera right, had to be slightly behind her as I didn't want her long hair to block the light to her legs and body. This one was pretty tricky to get just right. http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1938/31165263988_c2d92d377d_b.jpg
Animatexyz wrote:
These are incredible! That first image has a lot of impact right off the bat. I thought you were using 3 lights until I read your setup. Great Job!
Thanks!
I may have used a third light in some of these that I didn't mention. Sometimes the strip box is high and I still want to rim the legs, so I had another Einstein on a very short stand and a much smaller gridded strip box as well.
Magnificent stuff my friend. I love them all but the very last one is quite off the scale, wow! Hope your doing well, haven't spoken in quite some time.
Beautiful work, Ron. I've never been able to get beautiful light like that on the face when doing edge lighting of a dancer. The edge lighting by itself always leaves me with severe shadows and I'm going to have study this setup, though I don't think i have the overhead clearance necessary.
davenfl wrote:
Magnificent stuff my friend. I love them all but the very last one is quite off the scale, wow! Hope your doing well, haven't spoken in quite some time.
Dave
Thanks, Dave!! That last one is my fave as well. Things are going well, hard thing right now is making time to spend with the family and balancing that with falling behind on filling orders. But family comes first!
ebouwens wrote:
Beautiful work, Ron. I've never been able to get beautiful light like that on the face when doing edge lighting of a dancer. The edge lighting by itself always leaves me with severe shadows and I'm going to have study this setup, though I don't think i have the overhead clearance necessary.
Hey Eric,
Thanks! You don't need the overhead clearance on 2-6, and even 7. The key thing is to have the long gridded strip boxes to control the light. The next key is to place the light so the shadows go exactly where you want them to go. I think of it as sculpting the light and shadows. Once you get the hang of it, it goes pretty fast.
Very nice shots! To my taste, they're a little too contrasty. I like the pure black backgrounds, but I'd like to see the shadows on the dancers lifted a little. Again, just my personal preference.
Ron, these are so beautifully intense, crisp, defined... and so well captured.
You've carved out a genuinely unique role in these young ladies' lives and aspirations. You're such a remarkable talent but what I probably most admire is the measure of trust and excitement your subjects clearly feel when before your lens.
That's not easy to come by and speaks volumes of your many dedicated years of portraiture.
