Lesson Task – Studio Lighting

Portrait: Loop Lighting

Draw a studio setup for a portrait.

The setup i then chose, and a fairly simple yet flattering one, was loop lighting where you create a slight, interesting shadow on the face, creating a sort of oval frame. I later tried this technique in a studio myself. And please excuse the rought sketches 😉

Here is an example of loop lighting..

Beauty:

I chose to draw a studio setup consisting of an octabox (with softer light) and a polyboard to the right to bounce back some of the light from the octabox. A simple but quite beautiful result, as seen in the example below.

Fashion:

I chose to draw a setup with an octabox with up to 45 degrees angle, to one side, and two large reflecting panels that function to fill the sides up with light.

My own portrait pictures:

For this shot I used two softboxes for kinder shadows on the face. I also placed them at approx. 45 degrees from the subject on both sides. As well as a reflector on the back left side of the subject, to reflect some of the light back. The picture is edited a bit in Photoshop to enhance exposure and contrast, along with some skin smoothing.

As for the hard light, I used loop lighting, with one flash at at 45 degrees angle, although the subject moved a bit so the shadow fell further back on the face. It is edited to black and white.

The Next part of the assignment was to create a fictional fantasy poster using one of the photos taken in a studio or at home. I chose to go for a sort of supernatural, twilight-ish twist of the fantasy-genre, aimed towards teenage girls (or boys for that matter). I added a quickly drawn wolf silhouette, a moon, wolf and a snowy background to the picture, apart from typography. I did not pour my soul into making this one, so it still has a tacky feel, but it will have to be sufficient for now.