PigPog

I spent a while last weekend playing with strobes, using a chair as a model. It was useful, but doesn’t give too much idea what will work with a real person.

Today, I persuaded Sam to do some modeling for me, which was probably more fun for me than for her. I took a whole bunch of photos, all with the same background and zoom on the camera, but all with different lighting setups. Between each shot, I drew (or modified) a diagram of what the setup was for that shot, and photographed that. I was left with a load of photos, all in pairs, so I could match up the photo with the lights and settings that made it.

I found some deeply unflattering ways to set up a couple of little strobes – one at each side for two upward-pointing nose-shadows is an especially bad look!

Diffuse light is better, but a strobe on one side coupled with the on-camera flash at a low setting worked really quite nicely too.

Anyway, if you’re starting out with lighting, it’s a great way of trying out a load of ideas in a reasonably short time. Make sure you have your diagrams either kept or photographed, so you can match them up later, and you can see what worked and what didn’t.