Thanks Larry. The muted, low contrast colour scheme was a conscious decision to draw attention to the face. It's a style thing.
I was disappointed to see that the cheap new muslin backdrop didn't wrinkle up overnight. :-) I crammed it into its bag, squished all the air out, but no luck. So it's back in there now and I'm hoping that after a few days or weeks it will wrinkle, dammit. Yeah, background was way lighter than I wanted. But it was a small (though cozy) living/dining room area with light coloured walls and ceilings. I was out of stands at that point so gobos had to be handheld or foregone. I'll PP the wrinkles out in future. On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 9:33 PM, Larry Colen <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 08:59:34PM -0400, Bruce Walker wrote: >> A straight-forward "studio" portrait of my niece, Sophie. Shot on >> location in my sister's living room (she's a champ to put up with me >> rearranging the whole thing). >> >> http://flic.kr/p/fy42fh >> >> I was also testing my latest money-saving invention: $10 IKEA >> background support system. Ingredients: One Hugad black curtain rod, >> 210-385 cm; 2x Betydlig curtain rod brackets, top-slot filed out to >> fit 1/4" stud on top of light stand; use with two cheap 8' light >> stands. > > That sounds a lot like something I've done. > >> >> K20D, DA* 50-135/2.8 @ 90mm/f:5, 1/160th, ISO 100; >> Lr + Ps + Nik + Portraiture >> >> Paramount short lighting with reflector fill. AF540FGZ in Westcott >> Medium Apollo above-left, key; AF540FGZ in 30" umbrella softbox, >> boomed above behind-right, hair; 42" silver reflector, right. >> >> Comments welcome! > > The lighting is damn near perfect. > > There are a few things that I think you might have done differently, > advice that is worth approximately what it's costing you. > > 1) The dark green shirt is too close in color to the grey background. > I think that a red, or maroon sweater would have worked a lot better. > Alternatively, maybe some rim lighting would have set it off. > > 2) I find the creases on the backdrop distracting. The ideal situation > would involve a room two or three times the size of the one you had, > where you could move the backdrop far enough away that it would have > been either totally out of focus, unlit, or both. > Alternatively, if there is any way you could have used gobos to keep > most of the light off the backdrop and just hit it with a spot > behind Sophie, to add contrast, then you'd only need a small unwrinkled > area of background. That could have also set off the sweater. > > To prevent the distracting creases like those, I do one of two things. > I will either store a backdrop rolled up on a 10' section of ABS > so that it is smooth, and has no creases. Or I will store it wadded up > in a bin, so that it is covered by random wrinkles, with no distracting > patterns. > > Although, what I usually really do is just make sure that my lights > are much closer to my model than the background, and ideally not even > hitting the backgound, because if you can't see the backdrop, then you > can't see the creases. > >> >> -- >> -bmw >> >> -- >> PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List >> [email protected] >> http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net >> to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and >> follow the directions. > > -- > Larry Colen [email protected] http://red4est.com/lrc > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- -bmw -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
