{"id":17685,"date":"2013-10-03T06:04:08","date_gmt":"2013-10-03T10:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/?p=17685"},"modified":"2017-11-30T22:54:50","modified_gmt":"2017-12-01T02:54:50","slug":"studio-photography-low-key-lighting-dramatic-portrait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/studio-photography-low-key-lighting-dramatic-portrait\/","title":{"rendered":"Studio photography: Low-key lighting for a dramatic portrait"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Studio photography: Low-key lighting for a\u00a0dramatic\u00a0portrait<\/h1>\n

Randy has a look reminiscent of Ava Gardner, so I asked her to be a subject for my book, Lighting & Design<\/a>. I wanted to create a portrait of Randy in the Hollywood Glamor style of lighting, similar to the\u00a0vintage styled boudoir photo session<\/a>\u00a0(with Olena). And it looked great! But while I had someone so photogenic and with such dramatic styling, I wanted to take further photos of Randy, and she happily indulged me.<\/p>\n

For one of the setups, I wanted to explore again using the\u00a0Profoto beauty dish<\/a>\u00a0(affiliate<\/em>)\u00a0as a single light source. As mentioned in a previous article –\u00a0thoughts on using a beauty dish<\/a>\u00a0– a beauty dish is best used with a grid to contain the light spill. This does mean a beauty dish has to be used in a specific way – close up to your subject, and with specific posing.\u00a0Without additional light from other light sources to give fill-light, a beauty dish can be fairly challenging as a single light source.<\/p>\n

I wanted a low-key look, so I used a dark grey backdrop, and worked well ahead of it so that the light from the main light (beauty dish) had very little effect. (The Inverse Square Law helps here with the non-linear light fall-off to the background.) But to not have Randy’s dark hair melt away into a black background, it needed a hair-light of some kind. I set up a gridded\u00a0Profoto RFi 1’\u00d73′ softbox<\/a>\u00a0(affiliate<\/em>)\u00a0behind her light from the back (and above).<\/p>\n

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This pull-back shot shows where the gridded beauty dish was placed, as well as the gridded 1×3 softbox behind Randy.\u00a0Keep in mind that I pulled up the Shadow detail tremendously for this photo so that you could actually see the lighting gear here.<\/p>\n

Because the light from a gridded light source is fairly narrow, it does mean you, as the photographer have to pose your subject very specifically. There’s none of the free movement you can get when using large light sources and multiple lights in the studio. With this type of light source – a gridded softbox or a gridded beauty dish – even the slightest movement of your subject face, makes a big difference. It means you have to closely look how the modeling light falls on your subject.<\/p>\n

Post-processing was an adaption of my usual way of\u00a0retouching for portraits<\/a>.\u00a0I do like the dramatic results achieved with this two-light setup – very well suited for Randy’s look.<\/p>\n

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Photo gear\u00a0used (or equivalents)<\/h2>\n