Monday, 16 September 2013

Dark Studio Shoot

LiamFILL THE FRAME - Liam HeadshotLiamLiamWesWes
WesWesPushupWesAnna

Here's a selection of images from our studio shoot last week.
The models are all part of Team Kinetix - http://www.teamkinetix.co.uk
We were aiming for dark, moody shots of guys that are clearly athletes.

Considering they had very little experience posing for portrait shots, the models did a great job. They were easy to pose and got the hang of staying in the light as required and were keen to get the best possible images.

The reason we set this shoot up initially was to teach Liam (model in the beanie) how to shoot portraits and use studio lighting as he's just started a 2 year photography course and is incredibly keen to learn the craft.
Liam proved himself to be just as capable behind the camera as he was in front of it. Expect some great things from Liam's photography over the coming months!

All images in this album are shot on Canon EOS 7D with either 24-70mm f/2.8 L USM II or 100mm f/2.8 L macro.

The lights were quite bright and we wanted a dark background, so I made sure none of the lamps were facing directly at the backdrop (although it still needed to be significantly darkened in post production)
The shots were taken at between 1/125 and 1/160 shutter speed, aperture was between f/11 & f/13 and ISO 100 for the sharpest, noise-free images.

This was a simple 3 lamp setup with a black backdrop:
Key light was a medium sized softbox with a 300w flash head at 2/3 power. This was high to the right of the image.

I used a harsh 250w lamp at full power shooting from behind the model to the left. This gave us some outline and halo.

The third light was a 300w lamp set to 1/3 power with a shoot through umbrella. This was set forward of the model and to the far left of the image. This just lifted the left side of the image to remove harsh shadows.
Lighting setup for the shoot


Post processing was done entirely in Adobe Lightroom 4.4.
The colour images had blemishes removed, clarity boosted slightly, background darkened, saturation dropped a little and highlights dropped.

The black & white images had blemishes removed, saturation dropped, contrast boosted, clarity raised and a small amount of film grain added.

I was generally happy with these images straight off the camera but they were really polished in post processing.

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