Bruce Walker wrote:
Larry, I hear you, but contrast and skin tones can be tricky things to
reconcile.
If they were easy, I would have known how to change it to my liking.
You need to know that this image resulted from a session that I told
the model was like practicing musical scales for me: lighting practice
and experimentation. I was trying out things to see their effect,
without the usual pressure to produce any great images.
That's one advantage I have over you, I gave up on producing great
images years ago.
There was no properly exposed light in this shot really. The side/rim
highlight was about one stop over and the fill was two stops below
that. So her skin, other than the highlight, was guaranteed to fall
into shadow, and in colour tends to look darker and with richer tones.
I tend to consider anything between "blown out" and "lost in the noise"
to be properly exposed in digital. As long as details aren't lost in
clipping, noise and posterization, it's all good.
When I saw this shot I knew it was one to edit, and as I did I decided
to keep it in colour and experiment with toning the background and the
plinth. The bg was dark grey, the plinth light grey and I toned both
to tie in with her skin more. I really like the skin tones I was
getting here.
I can certainly see what you like about it.
I am going to do a black and white version. In black and white I can
easily increase the body contrast by modifying the tonal curve between
the lightest and darkest skin tone values. It's more hit-or-miss to do
that in a colour shot as the skin hue will often change in unfortunate
ways.
My hunch, is that if your soft fill on fiddle (4' Photek Softlighter) were a
bit brighter and a bit further back, the photo would appeal more to my sense
of aesthetic.
Actually, not. Not if you want more contrast on the body in the
shadow, anyway. Inverse square law: you need to bring the light source
closer and turn it down to get more rapid and deep fall-off, and then
you get the strong light/dark contrasts you seek.
I was thinking further back reduces the apparent size of the light,
leading to sharper edges to the shadow, hence darkening the shadows and
bringing up the intensity would brighten up the highlights to being
closer to the brightness from the rim light.
When you pull a light further away and brighten it to compensate, you
get a shallow light fall-off. It's the normal way to light a model who
is moving around and who you don't want to have fall into darkness or
be overexposed as they do. So it's also low contrast light as a
side-effect.
Arms was shot with a very hard light source: a single 7" reflector
with 15 degree grid and barn doors. Pretty much a spotlight shining on
the subject, from about 5 feet away. Hard shadows cast, medium
fall-off. I increased the contrast in post, so the shadow areas got
somewhat squashed, probably. Less detail there.
Thanks for looking and commenting. Appreciate it!
Thanks for doing the sort of experimentation that I'm interested in so
that I get the chance to learn from your effort.
And the pictures of lovely women are nice too.
On Wed, May 10, 2017 at 3:32 PM, Larry Colen<[email protected]> wrote:
Bruce Walker wrote:
Despite the title, nsfw.
http://portfolio.brucemwalker.com/index/I0000a6CzeIGEohA
For both this and tank, I love the subject, the pose and the composition,
but there is something about the skin tonality in the shadows that doesn't
thrill me. I wish I were able to better diagnose it, maybe someone who knows
more than I do about lighting could explain to me what it is, and how to
avoid it. I hesitate to use the word "fix", because it's an artistic choice
and a photo that I'd like better would not necessarily be one that Bruce
does.
Subjectively, it seems to me that the lighting in the "shadows" is too flat,
that their isn't enough contrast between the deepest shadows and the
lightest shadows.
When I look, specifically at the tones, objectively there seems to be a fair
amount of range in the shadows, which is part of where my uncertainty comes
from.
My hunch, is that if your soft fill on fiddle (4' Photek Softlighter) were a
bit brighter and a bit further back, the photo would appeal more to my sense
of aesthetic.
In terms of tonality, I do quite like the next one in the series, "Arms".
http://portfolio.brucemwalker.com/index/I0000aZZbCOcFfMg
The odd thing compared with my comments above is that there seems to be even
less range in the shadows.
I'm also curious how Fiddle study would work as a black and white.
I instructed Dorrie to bring something to the shoot to surprise me. So
she brought her beloved vintage fiddle. She can play, but hasn't for a
couple of years so we opted for still lifes.
645z, dfa645 55mm/2.8, f/10, 1/125th sec, 100 iso.
5' gridded strip softbox camera left slightly behind.
4' Photek Softlighter just camera-right in front.
Enjoy!
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Larry Colen [email protected] (postbox on min4est) http://red4est.com/lrc
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Larry Colen [email protected] (postbox on min4est) http://red4est.com/lrc
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