![\"\"](\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/portraits\/brian-calabrese\/Brian-Calabrese_2015_0090_Exposure-cyan.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I love the forgiving nature of large light modifiers – you don’t have such precision with a huge softbox as you do with a smaller, more contrasty\u00a0light modifier. \u00a0But you also have less opportunity for dramatic light, as you do with smaller light sources. In line with the idea\u00a0that a\u00a0smaller light = harder light = dramatic light<\/a>, I wanted to create a series of portraits that had a darker, moodier feel.<\/p>\n Brian Calabrese<\/a>, a\u00a0photographer\u00a0friend of mine, met up with me in my studio, and through various iterations of how to position him, and how to place the light, we got to some stunning portraits of him.<\/p>\n In trying to use the beauty dish as a dual light – lighting up Brian’s features, and as spill light\u00a0on the\u00a0background\u00a0– it took careful positioning of the light, and posing of Brian.\u00a0The beauty dish was \u00a0on a Manfrotto 025BS boom<\/a>\u00a0(affiliate<\/em>) that was on a light stand with casters. I kept the weight-end of the boom close to me so I could just reach out and adjust the light’s placement. (You can see this in the pull-back shot.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The beauty dish was on a boom here, since I needed\u00a0the light to be placed on nearly the same level as Brian. I wanted a dark moody\u00a0feel from the photo, therefore I asked Brian to turn his gaze downward – and this necessitated the light being positioned\u00a0lower. We took\u00a0numerous test shots until we had it just right. Here are\u00a0a few\u00a0of the other attempts that show how we changed Brian’s\u00a0posing and the lighting to finally get to the best setup.<\/p>\n In the final image I used\u00a0Alien Skin – Exposure 7<\/a>\u00a0– 669 Shadows Cyan, to give the image that blue-ish tone that looks like a cross-processed photo.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The large orange object to the edge of the frame, is the counter-weight on the boom to balance the studio flash-head and the beauty dish. That small orange clip in the middle of the frame\u00a0with the white piece of paper – it’s a note warning anyone to not loosen that handle! Otherwise the entire boom slides down.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n If you are interested in learning more about studio lighting, including lighting for headshots, I offer\u00a0workshops on studio lighting<\/a>. The workshops will be held at my\u00a0studio space in NJ,<\/a>\u00a0and it has\u00a0a wide range of studio lighting gear to play with!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dramatic studio lighting: Using the beauty dish as a single light source I love the forgiving nature of large light modifiers – you don’t have such precision with a huge softbox as you do with a smaller, more contrasty\u00a0light modifier. \u00a0But you also have less opportunity for dramatic light, as you do with smaller light Read more inside…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29115,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,22,511,136],"tags":[589,811],"yst_prominent_words":[3636,3649,3629,3609,1546,1545,3631,3612,3642,3634,3617,3648,3625,3605,3639,3647,3644,3620,1156,1537],"class_list":{"0":"post-28217","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-beauty-dish","8":"category-lighting","9":"category-profoto","10":"category-studio-photography","11":"tag-how-to-use-a-beauty-dish","12":"tag-using-a-beauty-dish","13":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28217"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28217"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49224,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28217\/revisions\/49224"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28217"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=28217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/portraits\/brian-calabrese\/Brian-Calabrese_9-up.jpg\")
<\/p>\nCamera settings & photo gear (or equivalents) used during this photo session<\/h2>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/portraits\/brian-calabrese\/Brian-Calabrese_2015_0151.jpg\")
<\/p>\nRelated links<\/h2>\n
\n
Studio lighting workshops<\/h2>\n