First – I really want to thank everyone who came out to my Portrait Lighting Basics class on Saturday, March 19. We had a great (sold out!) class. Hopefully some of our students will share some of their photos on our Flickr Page. All you have to do is join the group, and then you can add some of your photos.
For those of you who have never attended a Vistek Semiar, here is a quick video clip (that I shot with my iPhone) of what you can expect from one of my Portrait Lighting Classes.
This class ran for 3 hours and, as with all my classes, we shot tethered to a 52″ Plasma display so that all of the students can see what we’re up to. Everyone who attends has the opportunity to shoot the exact same pictures that I do, and to learn lighting from scratch. In this class I decided to show everyone how versatile the Elinchrom D-Lite 4 kit is (follow the link to see everything that the kit includes.)
• The first shot we did was with one Soft Box, directly on Camera Right. We set up this shot to create a very dramatic look, and used Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to process all of the images you’ll see below.
• With this second shot, below, we brought the soft box forward to Camera Right at a 45º angle at about 6′ high, aimed slightly downward. Still we’re only using 1 main light.
• For this next shot we decided to leave our light source in the exact same spot, and switch to a Medium Photek Umbrella.
I processed this shot 2 ways: first is a B&W Infrared look that I created as a preset in Lightroom, and the second is just straight colour, with a bit of skin softening. By the way I’m teaching my introductory Lightroom seminar at Vistek, on Saturday, April 2 in our downtown Toronto store.
• Next up we went back to the Elinchrom Porta Lite soft box that comes with our D-Lite 4 kit, as our main light, in the same position. We’ve also added in a 30″ Silver Lastolite reflector as fill on Camera Left and a 10º grid spot on our second light (as a hair light) behind our model & aimed at her hair from behind, on camera left.
• In the shot below, we’ve added in a Lastolite Triflector kit which surrounds our model with reflectors to Camera Left, Right, and below her in front to add fill. Our main light is now directly centered in front of our model from high above. We still have our second light in the back to Camera Left & behind our model as a hair light.
• This is our last shot for this lesson. What we’ve done differently is taken our grid spot and aimed it at our Lastolite Collapsible background just to give it a slightly different look.
All of the images were shot with a Canon 1DS Mark III with a 100mm 2.8 macro lens.
Also used on this shoot were:
That’s what you can do with your Elinchrom D-Lite 4 kit – pure and simple. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post. And, if you already own an Elinchrom D-Lite 4 kit, why not share some of your best shots on our Flickr Group?
Thanks!
Gary Goldberg