Bleargh!

So, here we go with round two. The general set up was a hair more complex this time.

Just finding a spot was probably the hardest part. Going through each room in the house I was met with obstacle after obstacle. For every one wall that was open and did not have enough room to set up the equipment, there were two more that had enough room with various pieces of furniture obstructing the wall. Grr. Etc. Finally I just decided to go with a wall in my bedroom, some room and slightly more comfortable for the model, aka "The Girlfriend(tm)" than being in front of everyone at home.

Now, for the set up of the background. I already had a fairly white wall, recently painted and whatnot so, the background wasn't much of an issue. I knew I needed fairly bright so as to come out as close to white as possible. After a few tests, I found just off white was a more pleasant tone than pure white, but I digress. It was a pretty straight forward problem. White wall, not enough light. How do we fix it? More light, of course!

So, I grabbed some Halogen Lamps my brother had, a single 500W floor lamp and a pair of 250W lamps on a tripod. The single was placed on the floor to the left of the camera, behind the subject, angled upward and toward the wall. The 250W pair were similarly posed on the right and adjusted to fill in the falloff of the single lamp. All said and done, it produced a fairly even light on the background.

Now, as for the lighting of the subject. Again, the light itself was fairly simple. Getting it all set up was difficult. The best spot for the light stand just happened to be directly below a ceiling fan. Of all the luck. So, I got the umbrella on and all set up and wedged it right up against the blub. Set it up to half power and added the CTO Tungsten to balance with the Halogen Lamps.

Now, the only down side to this whole set up was the close proximity of everything. As such I could not put as much space as I wanted between the subject and the back wall. This caused the halogen lamps to spill a little bit of light onto her face. Also, with the low ceiling, the lamps were also bouncing light all over the place adding to the ambient light a bit.

Alright, now admittedly this is not exactly the most appealing pose a person could strike. But I did have permission as it is arguably the best shot from the entire shoot. Once again, what luck I have. In any case, there we have it folks! Until next time!

Round One!

Light?!

...

Ok... that was terrible, I admit it. Never the less, here we have it folks! The results of my first attempt at using my strobist equipment properly.

My best friend came over and I some how managed to convince her to pose for me. Really it was quite free form. She sat down and we started talking, all the while her moving about trying different poses. Etc, etc, etc.

My own critical review says I probably should have used a little more strobe and a little less background light. Also, a narrower aperture to capture that little bit of the elbow that didn't make it. Otherwise, I'd say I'm ok with this being my first attempt.

As for the set up, the background light is that of a bare CFL blub approximately 10 feet from the camera/background to the camera's right. About 10 feet to the left is my 430EX at 1/16th shooting into a 43 Inch Silver Umbrella with a CTO Tungsten for fill. Nothing too fancy.

More to come as `The Girlfriend(tm)' heads over to try her hand at it. And more complex setups too!