I get hired often to do audition pictures for dancers. When they come to my studio for that, it's always fun because when we're done with the standard (boring, to me, by lighting terms) audition pics, I always invite them to do some artistic shots with dramatic lighting.
This one is Tiffany. First shot is a the standard audition pic. Two lights with medium softboxes at about 45 degrees out from her and pointed inside of her so the light that is hitting her is largely feathered. One light on the black backdrop just to ensure there is separation from her black leo from the back background. I could throw a blur on the black paper backdrop but it matters zero for this sort of thing.
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The after-session begins now. Generally I'm using two gridded Einstein lights are otherwise not modified.
2. Sitting on top of my 8-foot ladder.
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4. I was just playing around with my fog in a can and I don't think it was a tremendous success or anything, but it gave me an idea for a shot I want to do with my next dancer. Just sharing so you can see what I do with it the next time, and where the future image's idea came from.
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6. Back against the black flooring and backdrop. You can see the difference the lighting makes (gridded vs softbox) and how dark the backdrop gets with no light on it. To be fair, the gridded lights are perpendicular to her, thus the shadows.
