studio lighting demo: One light workshop

Castleford camera Club kindly invited me over to their club tonight to show them a few different portraiture lighting styles. Just to spice up the challenge, the club asked that I only use their lighting equipment and they also supplied the models from a dance academy in Garforth. As always, I like to keep things simple so that any lighting I do can easily be replicated at home using speedlights and simple reflectors. So, that’s what I did to start with, one light and a reflector for some classic beauty lighting using Emily as the model and then by using just a single head, I made full use of the inverse square law and a bit of feathering to get some beautiful black and white images before setting everything back up for the members to shoot the beauty headshots with addition of a soft hair light. While some of the members photographed Emily, I then did a set-up using a continuous light and balanced the shots with ambient for the headshots of Catherine and Addison. Continuous lights are de rigueur with a lot of photographers at the moment but this was my first time working with them. They lack the power of flash for me and seem less versatile but I did my best with them. Won’t be rushing out to buy any just yet though, my trusty Bowens 500s are just fine for now.

A few shots here of the three models and I’m guessing I just found my latest muse :¬)