Hard lighting with off camera flash
After seeing the Pretty Flash Kit post here on SmokingStrobes, some of our cousins have asked me various questions regarding the use of hard light. Well, let me give myself a little caveat: hard light is most of the time NOT what you want to have in beauty photography.
Even if you want it, then usually you want to limit the use of hard light to something like a kicker beam of light which is shining over your models shoulder from behind. Hard light is so much harder to master compared to soft light. When you use hard light, then the exact position of your lightsource relative to your model is super important for the result. Zero tollerance. Softlight will usually give the model plenty of freedom to move around the scene.
Did I convince you to stay away from hard light? No? You are a die hard? Ok, ok, if you really really want to then of course you always can go crazy on hard light. You can even light your complete beauty scene with bare speedlights if you want to. Let me give you one example of how I am doing such crazy stuff. Watch today’s video.
The reasons I stayed away from using my beloved umbrellas for this particular scene were:
- I wanted to underline the subtle “action” character of the scene. I felt like hard light transports that better.
- The room was extremely small for such a scene with multiple models and umbrellas would have eaten up valuable space
- I wanted the light to hit the models hard but then fall off extremely fast so that furniture and walls are pretty dark
One cool thing that the zoom head of my speedlights enable me to do: I can really control where the light is going and what is sinking into shade. In this scene I feature 3 models in a small hotel room. And I want the models to pop out by lighting them while I want the furniture, which is just centimeters away from them, to sink into darkness. It should feel a little bit mysteriously. Speedlights allow me to do that.
The heads of the speedlights are gel’d with CTO gels because in the I am shooting mixed light since I have the tungsten lamp on the wall in the background.
Did I mention that I really love the zoom heads of speedlights?
I wish you good light!
-- Michael
Hard to get my thick German accent? Here's the transcript!
Hey fellow photographer! How's it going?
I'm Michael Zelbel.
In this video I will show you a very quick and easy
one-light lighting setup.
I'm using the setup in order to warm up my models before the shoot.
That's very useful especially if you are shooting nude photos,
and you need to get the model comfortable in front of your lens.
The model we are warming up today is Cousin Emily.
You might go like: "Hey come on, Cousin Emily is so
used to photographs. She is a real pro. You don't need to warm her up!"
But, that's wrong actually! I think it's a very good practice
to warm up your model.
If the model is not yet comfortable in front of your lens
and in front of your lights you will read that
in her body language and in her facial expressions.
That gives you results which you usually don't want to have.
So better warm her up and make a sort of artistic shooting
with a few little photos upfront.
Usually you don't have so much time and resources
ahead of your actual shoot that is why I think you should
go for a super simple one-light lighting setup.
Something which is bullet proof, which definitely
produces good results which the model will like,
which is very easy to light and which gives you the
ability to shoot her nude but which does not show anything.
This is what we are going to do.
We achieve that by covering the model with
a big piece of silk so she is hidden underneath the silk.
Let's have a look at the actual lighting setup.
We have a simple black backdrop which is made up
out of two black curtains.
Those curtains have a gap in the middle, right in the middle.
The model is placed in the middle and she is
pretty close to that black curtain, 1.50 meter away.
That's not so much distance.
She is covered with a big piece of white silk,
which is thin enough to let some light go through,
but thick enough to - under normal lighting conditions -
not show anything.
The one speedlight that we use is placed right in
the gap of this two backdrops.
It's in this case a speedlight with guide number 58.
It's dialed down to 1/16th of its power,
zoomed back to 24mm so it got a broad cone of light,
which makes sure the light goes everywhere in the silk,
no matter how the model is posing.
The camera is a little bit further away,
4 meters or 13 feet and it's on standard settings,
1/200s, f/11, ISO400 and daylight white balance.
That's already it. Not so much to setup.
But it's ideal for warming up your model, not only a shy model.
The model may or may not wear underwear,
that really makes no difference.
What makes a bit of difference is the hairdo.
If she is tying up her hair that really makes for some nice,
fancy shapes underneath the silk.
Some mistake that I made in this little shoot was
I had Cousin Emily wearing high heels and jewelry.
It's not such a big difference but on this silhuetted photos
it does not really match the emotion of the photos.
Wearing nothing would be much better.
Especially if you use a little trick:
You can, for instance, turn around the photos 180 degrees
and then it looks like a sort of cocoon.
If she is then inside this cocoon she looks like a
sort of embryo, actually an embryo with boobs,
but still something like an alien embryo.
And then high heels and jewelry, you know,
doesn't really match. But whatever. It's just for warming up. I don't care.
You can give your model permission to do all sorts of
wired poses underneath the silk, wired expressions.
That makes her free to later on also do wired poses.
That really warms her up.
It's ideal for that because she is so covered.
If you still say: "Michael, bullshit, you don't really
need to warm up your model so much!"
I would ask you to do ONE thing, because then
for sure you haven't done one thing:
Have somebody taking nude photos of yourself!
And I really mean that. Do it! Do it at least one time!
I don't blame you if you never did it, but now go
and ask a photography buddy to shoot some nude
photos of yourself.
Because this way you experience how exposed a nude
model feels in front of a lens.
Then you will know that even a seasoned pro of a model
feels quite exposed and it's a good idea to make her
comfortable and warm her up.
Alrighty! Enough for this week, now please click on the like button,
click on the plus one button, drop a comment,
and come back next Thursday!
I wish you good light!
Hey Michael,
The video download doesn't seem to be working. Btw, I love your behind the scene tutorials. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Mike, thanks a lot for the flowers and for the heads up. There was an issue with the server. It's fixed now.
I only shot with naked flashes on backlight or kicker lights, to enhance volumes of the body...
It seems to me a little strange, this way of lighting...
Live long an prosper.
Pedro.
I fully agree. For me too, backlight or kicker lights is the prime use of bare flashes. Or occasions where my flashes are far away from my model. In this cases the diffuser does not add benefit anymore and just sucks power.
It always amazes me what you do with such simple lighting techniques. It puts to shame those that use tons of expensive gear to get the same old boring shots all the time.
Thank you for your videos.
bob
Thank you for your kind words, Bob. I mean, if people really love to play with big gear, if that is the fun part in their hobby, then they should absolutely do it. What I want to do is to encourage people who can't afford big gear or who don't want to carry it, to still approach shooting big scenes if they like to - because it's possible and it's fun.
Thanks for fixing the links. I'm also curious why you decide to censor your images? I don't believe there is anything wrong with artistic nudity or nudity for that matter. Just curious if there were a place where I can view the photos on this site without the grey bars.
I asked myself this, too. If the answer is the models want it so, I would agree. If not...
Anyway, I would not understand that models can pose on nudity and deny permission to publish their uncensored photos.
Live long and prosper.
Hi Mike! I fully agree. I too believe there is nothing wrong with nudity. I believe that it does not even need to be artistic. I think in general nudity and being natural is perfectly alright.
However, I add the censor bars because from the statistics I see that people arrive on this website from all sorts of links on other websites, on twitter, facebook and on google. I know that a lot of people are offended by nudity for cultural, religious or whatever reasons. I do respect that and consequently I don't confront them with nudity right upfront.
Part of why I do this blog is that I would like to show my readers that nude photography is a really awesome hobby. It's a lot of fun and it makes a lot of people happy. Not only the viewers and the photographers, if done right, then it also makes models proud. But, even though I've got an even much more hedonistic background, I'm not about "hammering" that into anybodies head. I rather give a little taste of what it is all about.I want to let them decide themselves wether they like to see more or not.
Pretty soon I will have my portfolio website online. On that website I won't censor photos because I guess it usually won't be found in search. People who surf there usually expect to see nudity. That's why I am not going to censor any images on that website.
Sorry, for the late reply. I uploaded them to http://michaelzelbel.deviantart.com
Love your lighting diagram. Moody pics, too.
Cheers,
GuessTheLighting.com
Thanks Ted! I had a look at Guess The Lighting - it really rocks!
lol crazy concept :) but again a nice tutorial with a funny note
I love the humor as well as the information in you videos
I really appreciate your tutorials (especially the videos). They're really inspiring me to focus more on good technique and having fun with photo shoots rather than worrying about my lack of fancy equipment.
Thank you very much for your tutorials, they have really helped me to become more efficient and accurate with my lighting. BUt I do have a question, I have a model that I'm shooting on Thursday, her usual photographer is Bob Coulter and she would like some photos in his style. I have been trying to figure out how he illuminates his models. He usually works in hotel rooms and from what I can tell he uses the available light from the lamps in the room and I think he might be using a snoot to illuminate his models. I was wondering if you could take a look at his photos and give me some insight on how he does his lighting. Thank you so very much, any help would be appreciated.
HIs website is crazybabe.com
Hi dggraphics,
yes, the light from the lamps is visible and quite some hard light besides that. If I would want to make such a light, then I would set my camera to
1/125 sec
f/ 5.6
ISO800
Whitebalance according to taste, somewhere between tungston and daylight
This way the lamps in the room contribute nicely to the atmosphere, but they won't play the major role. You don't give up your control to available light, you still give your flashes something to lighten up. OK, the flashes:
A bare speedlight on lightstand that is just a little bit higher than the model. Zoom the speedlight to 50mm, ask your model every now and then to point her nose towards the light. Let it contribute 2/3rd of the overall light
I'd use my on camera speedlight as a fill, pointing under the ceiling of the hotel room. Let the fill contribute 1/3rd of the overall light.
The photos on that website don't use a kicker light, but hey, the goal is to make better photos, isn't it? So use a third speedlight to rimlight your model from somewhere behind her. Maybe put it onto a lightstand that is not visible in the frame. Take the power of this speedlight way back, so that it does not flare too much.
I suggest you use a CTO gel on all speedlights to match the Tungston character of the lamps in the room.
Snoots are not needed for this light.
I wish you a spectacular shoot. Link a result in here if you like.
Good light!
-- Michael
Thanks a lot Vextaposition! You got exactly the attitude it takes to get to the next level!
While I like how soft light makes skin look, I love how hard light seems to bring out color and eye details.
One way I can achieve great head shots is using a ring light. This seems to make eyes pop, and due to axial nature of the light/lens arrangment, eliminates many skin issues.
You can see a before and after post processing example of a shot with hard ring flash here:
Ring Flash Head Glamour Head Shot Example
Very good work Yucel!
How did you find a model with two eyecolors? Awesome!
Thanks Michael, I found her at a shoot out that was put on by one of my models. We clicked, pun intended,and I noticed the eyes when I was touching up shots from the original shoot.
Then we did the shoot with the pics you see in my Arizona studios.
Where did you get the horse mask from? It looks very intriguing and I don't think I have seen anything like it before. It helped create a great series.
Cousin Harry, here in Germany we celebrate Carnival every year. I got the mask from a carnival costume shop. I thought: Wouldn't it be intersting to let Asian models play with that funny German stuff? However, because the mask was looking a bit tooooo funny, I wrapped it into nylon pantyhose, which also adds a little bit of mystery - at least I hope so.
Very Cool!