Lighting Rosemary

My previous entry I showed the photos I made today with model Rosemary Timmons and makeup artist Kerrin Birchenough. In this post I'm going to talk about the lighting set ups for the session.

Above you can see some of the basic setup. There is a 7-foot Westcott Parabolic Umbrella with black cover overhead (you can see the end of the umbrella shaft and the handle from the strobe head at the top of the picture). There is also a Westcott strip bank overhead behind the model. She is sitting on an apple box and there is an oval shiny reflector in front of her to bounce back some light from the umbrella to open any shadows on the model's face. A Blow It Fan sits to camera right to provide some motion to some of the photos. On each side of the model were black Westcott reflectors to kill any bounce from the sides.

Here is a view that shows the head in the
umbrella and the strip box in the back

Some of the images added a
ring Light in front

This is the model's view
(sans photographer).
The ring light is not in position here, but
you can see the Westcott 7-foot umbrella

Another view from behind the camera. This one is
a little deceptive because it makes it look like
I actually use my tripod. You can see the gray
seamless background and the black velvet ready
to be hung in the background. The hand painted
gray muslin is on the right

The main light for the day was a Speedotron strobe set powering the heads in the umbrella and strip light. At some points during the session I unplugged the umbrella head and replaced it with another head with either a 10-degree grid or a snoot, as in the next four images.

Snoot with black reflector

Snoot, as above

snoot, as above

10-degree grid

For other images I turned off the head in the umbrella and used a ring light. For yet others, I mixed the ring light and the umbrella.

Looking through the ring light

The backgrounds for these images consisted of gray seamless paper, black velvet cloth, some remnants from the fabric store, and a hand-painted gray muslin (courtesy of my recent class with Rosanne Olson at Photographic Center Northwest).

None of today's work would have been possible with Rosemary and Kerrin. Here are some iPhone photos of the prep work...

Getting started with hair

Initial makeup application

Finalizing hair for the last images

One last iPhone photo of the set at the end of the day...

Please feel free to post questions or comments.

Thanks!