Learning Fashion Photography From the Masters

In my first year of art school, in 1982, I had to take an Art History class as a requirement. I was pretty unhappy about this, feeling like it was a waste of time as I wasn’t going to learn anything about photography. I remember the class to this day. The teacher used a text book and showed us slide shows of the art as we went through the different periods of time and the art of that period. I was bored, restless, and just plain annoyed with being “made” to sit in this class. I arrived late where it was usually dark because lights were turned off to see the slide show. I sat in the back, slouching with generally a bad attitude. Until one day, up came a slide of Donatello’s sculpture, David, and I nearly fell off my chair.

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Beauty lighting is unique in itself because it only addresses lighting the model’s face. That’s not to say that you are not concerned with lighting her hair or other parts of her body. But when you are shooting a beauty ad or a headshot, it is imperative to understand how to specifically light for beauty. For the most part now in my career, I rely on a lighting accessory known as a beauty dish. A beauty dish is a round, flat dish usually 18″ to 36″ in diameter. It is metal and has a smaller opaque dish inside the metal dish that the light reflects against. The idea is the light reflects onto the smaller opaque dish, back into the metal dish and onto your model. The light is unforgiving but it is highly controllable in studio lighting situations. You can use a diffusion material over them, also known as a “sock”. Or you can also use a grid over the dish. A grid will soften the light but you’ll have more definitive shadows. The sock will soften the entire face, much like a soft box.

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Subtracting light

© 2008 Melissa Rodwell Photography LLC.

One of my lighting “secrets” is subtracting light from a set. Of course, you have to know how to light if you’re going to figure out how to not light. There are a number of ways to achieve this. When I was still learning lighting, I would set up my lights in an organized fashion; key light, back light, hair light, etc. if you have a basic lighting set up, you can start there. Then it’s time to play! Start by removing the key light. How does it look? Too dark? Either turn it back on but turn it down to a lower setting. Or if you placed your key in front of your model, put it to her side. Put a soft box on a light head, then take a V flat and cover half of the box. Subtracting light, see? It’s all about taking away the light, but leaving enough there to get a good exposure. You can also leave your key in place but remove the back light or hair light. Or eye light or background light. One of the things I love to do is to over-expose my back lighting and letting that light “fill” my model. I let it wrap around her so it is actually used as a broad key light source. It’s tricky, especially in digital where you can’t blow out your whites. But it can be done.

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For those of you who don’t know, cyc is short for cyclorama. They are in most professional studios and have replaced the seamless paper almost entirely. Why? Because with a cyc, you have complete control over your background. A cyc is where the corners and seams are not visible. Cycs normally cover two sides of the studio. Assuming that your model is far enough away from the cyc, lighting can be controlled so that the background effect can be light or dark. Colored lights, cukaloris and other patterned screens can be used on the cyc to create interesting background effects. When lit evenly, the smooth surface, even as it goes around the corner of a studio, can provide an “infinity effect” — an endless space behind the models.

You can either light the cyc or not light the cyc. I will show you the difference. To achieve an “infinity effect”, I light the background with 4 light heads. 2 on each side. They are angled at a 45 degree angle to hit the background evenly. I use V flaps behind my lights to control flare and spillage onto the set.

This shot is using the 4 lights on the background effect:

As you can see, there is no shadow on the background. It is a smooth, endless appearing background.

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