Last week I had a 4 hour shoot with the awesome Dance Fusion dance team. There were some 30 people at this shoot ranging from the dancers to the mothers of the younger dancers.
It was quite a day for sure and I was exhausted. We had a great time for sure and I'm looking forward to the next one.
The first half of the shoot was shot on-location and then we moved onto the Jesus Wall Studio here in LA which is the place I usually hit up when I need a full on studio.
This shot setup was fairly simple. It was natural light filtered through the clouds. The backdrop allows for the colors to pop in this shot.
Same scenario for this one. Its the same location just moved a little bit. The lighting hits her face on more of an angle compared to the shot above. Side lighting will show your textures a lot more and give you some pop or drama. Sometimes your shot doesn't call for this but here it didn't hurt the picture and came out nice.
These setups are hard to mess up. Its a white cove in a white room. The light used is a single strobe filtered through a very large octobox. Light bounces all around and you get a pretty good shot with lighting as long as you watch your highlights. I cloned out the side of the cove that was on the left side of the picture and I applied a simple sepia tone to the shot. I dodged the two faces in the back to give them a little more pop.
Same lighting arrangement setup here just different composition. These white backdrops are great for simple head shots. They are also great for cutting out the background and placing in your own if you wanted to.
One thing that usually poses a problem when shooting with studio lighting is that your camera limits your sync speed to around 1/250th of a second. Well, unless you shoot with a medium format and have a Leaf digital back, then thats not a problem. Anyways, movement sometimes comes out a little bit blurry. If you are shooting in an otherwise dark room, this probably wont become a problem because your subject is only lit up for that brief flash that emits from your strobe, other wise its dark and your camera wont capture your subject moving due to it being too dark.
Freezing your subject isn't always the best solution, sometimes you want a little blur when it comes to portraying action. Blur shows movement and action. This shot has just a slight bit of blur, enough to still freeze the subject and yet still show action and movement.
Theres the side of the cove. It allows for a smooth white background without a crease you would otherwise have with a normal wall.
The studio without the background taken out.
If you are interested check out the dance team at
this address.
Last week I had a 4 hour shoot with the awesome Dance Fusion dance team. There were some 30 people at this shoot ranging from the dancers to the mothers of the younger dancers. 
I've always loved working with the kind of shots you have in the very last picture there. I'm guessing this is several shots put together?
ReplyDeleteThis is just me, but maybe you can try something (if you haven't already), that I tend to do (and notice) with these shots. Depending on the angle of the shot, I like to "push" some layers back, like in a 3D area, and "pull" some forward, creating the illusion of different depths. I've done this and the client specifically wanted them lined up because they didn't want to "minimize" anyone's impact in the group. Ok, that's cool. I understand. As an artist, I like the depth, so I tend to go with the "3D" area look.
Well, that's what I do and think every time I see those kind of shots :)
Oh, and wonderful shots they are! The natural lighting is always great! The colors really do pop. Keep up the astounding work man.
Great idea Kyle. I didn't want to minimize anyone anymore than the other, just like you stated above. However, I did add a little bit of depth to that shot by layering them. Thanks for the comment.
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