So I was walking near my apartment building with my camera today. It’s a pro DSLR and a guy sitting at the Starbucks noticed and approached me about taking some glamor shots of his girlfriend this weekend.
I told him I’d do it and gave him my contact info. Now, I do have a little bit of experience shooting models but I have only done it in natural light, as I don’t have a light kit. I also disclosed the fact that I am still a student and not really an established professional yet, but do have advanced understanding of photography and my camera seemed impressive enough to him that he still wants me to do it in exchange for using the photos in my portfolio and he’s willing to pay a small fee on top of that.
Here’s the problem: they are staying at a hotel and want to do the shoot there, and as I mentioned I don’t have a light kit. I know that unless I bring some kind of basic rig the photos aren’t going to come out that great. So I want to either buy a basic starter kit or rent one (I live in L.A. so there are tons of places I can go for this).
So what kind of lights/reflectors can I get for reasonably cheap and how should I use them to light the shoot?
Do you have a strobe?
You can do quite flattering portraits with a single strobe reflected off of a piece of white cardboard. If you shoot during the day, you can use daylight diffused through white mesh curtains as a side light.
Pros are going to have several lights, as you know - Main, fill, back and hair light. You don’t need all those, just keep and eye on your shadows using the preview on your camera.
If I were you, I’d look up modeling lighting on some of the photography sites. But basically you should have at least two strobes, a main and a fill flash and a light box, umbrella, or diffuser. If you’re going full glamour, you’ll probably want a third light for backlight for the hair. Test your setup beforehand to make sure your camera is properly tripping the strobes.
For glamour photos, you want soft lighting and probably want to avoid harsh shadows (unless you’re being artistic). So one strobe to the right and high, the other on the other side, at low intensity to fill in the shadows, and one in the back to generate a bit of glow for the hair.
If you do any outdoor shots, you’ll want some kind of reflector for fill lighting. A piece of foam with aluminum foil will work fine, although a mylar disk will last longer and looks more professional.
Make sure you have the model fill out a modeling form giving you permission to use your shots in the portfolio. Given that you don’t actually know these people, it’d be wise to make sure someone knows where you’re going with all your expensive equipment.
Yeah I was planning on the release. And I thought about potential for shadiness too: I’ll be sure to set it up in the daytime and keep my main gear in the car when I show up just to make sure everything looks legit before I set up. He asked me if I had my own studio but I don’t, and my apartment is too small and cluttered to shoot in so it only makes sense to go to them.
There’s so many ways you can do this. As Finagle says two soft boxes (or umbrellas, or a combo, but I prefer soft boxes or octoboxes), two lighting stands, two strobes would be one of the classic set-ups. With a possible third light that can be used for a variety of things, but in the classic three-light set-up, it would be used as a backlight/hairlight. So this is a key light, fill light, back light set-up.
But, depending on the room, you could get away with a lot less. If there’s a nice window, you can use that light as one of your two or three lights in the setup. If you have a nice white wall, you can use just a Speedlight and bounce it off that and, voila, you’ve got an instant giant softbox. You can even point two bare strobes up into the corners of the room behind you, provided they’re white or even beige, and turn that into two diffuse light sources. You’ll have to play around a bit with positioning and power (you generally don’t want the lights to be at equal intensity, since you’re trying to create a 3D effect), but there’s plenty you can do while still traveling light. But you need to understand the basics of lighting to be able to improvise effectively.
Strobist.com is an excellent resource for learning how to light. It was started by a photojournalist as a way to teach others his tips and tricks for light-weight, on-location lighting with Speedlights. Now, while this site is geared more towards people who have to travel light and are on-the-go, so they can’t drag around a Pelican case of Elinchromes with them everywhere, the lighting tips apply just the same. If you work your way throught the Lighting 101 and Lighting 102 archive here, it will immensely help with your understanding of lighting.
If you want to go fairly cheap, any sort of reflector will do, to cut down on the contrast, or to act as fill light (same difference)…
one of those silvery colored windshield shades people use in cars
a large white piece of paper, cardboard, whatever
a second flash unit, set to about 1 stop higher (less light) than the main flash
Also, natural window light can be very flattering just by itself.
You can also do the following (if you do your own developing):
Using the zone system,
To go for less contrast (N-1) shoot normally or overexpose by 1/2 f-stop and then underdevelop by 80 %
To go for more contrast (N+1) shoot normally or underexpose by 1/2 f-stop and overdevelop by 20%
Personally, I’d go for a “fill” to control the contrast.
Thanks for the link pulykamell - looks useful, I’ll read through it.
I forgot to mention I do have a Speedlite 380EX flash hotshoe attachment with a mounting bracket, and just bouncing it off the ceiling/wall does produce a nice soft light effect, so that’s one light source. I’m looking at some strobes and trying to determine how they work since I haven’t used them before - do they plug into the camera and auto-sync with the flash?
Thanks for all the helpful advice. Oh and I shoot digital so no developing.
You connect one to your camera’s PC socket. It should be under one of the rubber flaps on the left side of your Canon. Assuming you’re using lights with a master-slave flash system, you set one light to master (the one connected to your camera), and all the others to slave. The master light will trigger all the lights (these usually work on an optical slave system.) Or you can connect Pocket Wizards (radio slaves) to each of the lights, and then put a Pocket Wizard on your hotshoe and trigger the lights that way.
Or, if you are using strobes with optical slave triggering, you can use the Speedlight 380EX to fire those lights. Set them all to “slave” and make sure your 380EX is NOT set to TTL or ETTL (which has a pre-flash. Manual mode and, I believe, Auto Mode both do not have monitor pre-flashes.)
Also, make sure you don’t set your camera to a shutter speed faster than the flash sync speed. It’s usually 1/200 - 1/300 for Canon professional dSLRs. If you don’t, you’ll see a dark bar over the edge of your picture where the flash and shutter have gone out of sync.
I’d be very careful here. Some stranger sees you with a camera, and invites you to a hotel room where he wants you to take glamour photographs of his girlfriend?
It may be all legit, but don’t let your desire for work override your good judgment.