First Test Shoot....

Today I had my first test shoot.  After getting my times mixed up (again), I finally managed to rent two Flash Heads, stands, soft boxes and a Beauty dish.  I think the shoot went well, I have the image that I am going to use for the digital Visualisation for the interim crit.  I was clear on my idea; I wanted to use cross lighting, with one light, and a black background.  I also had a pretty good idea of how I wanted the subject to be.

First, I used a long rectangular soft box, positioned vertically, to the right of the subject.

This is the setup for the above photo.

It took a few tries to get the light in the right place to get a highlight in both eyes.  I like the shadows on the face, but wanted to try and lessen the shadow on the chin.

  Next I tried using a square soft box, to see what the difference would be.  Here is the result.  

This is the setup for the above photo.  

As you can see, there is less light spilling vertically from the soft box, which allowed me to concentrate the light more on the subjects face.  however, because the light is more concentrated, it gives harsher shadows on the fee, which I did not want.  

I finally settled on the beauty dish. 

This is the setup for the above photo.  

 The beauty dish gives a much wider spread of light, which gives softer shadows (By soft, I mean the transition of light to dark).  I still need to work on the composition and position of the light, as well as the amount of light from the flash.  

Overall, I think todays shoot was successful, I am now more clear on my idea, and how I should go about shooting it.  

Layers, Blending Modes, Quick selection....

In Monday's Digital Imaging session, we learned how to use layers, blending modes, and the quick selection tools.  Here is an image of Brendan, my flatmate, which I shot a while ago, overlaid with an image of cracked mud.  I brought the image of cracked mud in as a new layer.  My aim was to create a double exposure effect.  I reduced the opacity of the new layer a little, and used a layer mask.  With a low opacity brush, masked in his eyes a little more, to make them stand out.  Its not as good as I would like, so I will have another go at it soon.  

Workshop

On friday group B had a workshop in the studio, looking at different lighting arrangements.  We looked at broad lighting, short lighting, butterfly lighting and some others too.  We then had the afternoon to set up the lights, and try them arrangements out ourselves.

This is an example of broad lighting.  We used a shoot through umbrella for this shot.   

This is an example of short lighting.  This was using a beauty dish.   

This is an example of cross lighting, which was also using a beauty dish.