Tags
Beauty Lighting, Business Headshots, Chimera Beauty dish, Corporate Headshots, CT Headshot Photographer, CT Headshots, Hensel Lighting, Over and Under Lighting, Strobe Light
Hi and welcome back.
Right after I got home from CA, I had a corporate headshot sitting.
For this type of shot, I usually use a three light setup:
- Key light with a reflector
- Hair light
- Background light
But when my client walked through the door of my studio, I wanted to take a different approach. Once I saw her facial features, I decide to try over and under beauty or clamshell lighting.
This is a technique to light for beauty headshots like for L’Oreal or Maybelline advertisements, where the sole purpose is to highlight the face.
I set my lighting for over and under beauty and had Abi stand in position. I often have my corporate clients stand instead of sit. I find that standing allows jackets to fall naturally and people are generally easier to pose when standing.
Here’s my setup:
- Hensel Porty 1200L with head on a Matthews C-stand and Hollywood Grip Arm
- Chimera 30″ beauty dish with diffusion screen installed
- Hensel Integra 500 on the bottom
- Hensel 16×25 kit softbox
I usually run my fill light at least 1 stop lower in power than my key. We worked fairly quickly so I was able to give her several background options. With blue being a strong color influence on her website, she loved the blue background.
And here’s the final.
Nikon D3, 105 mm f/2 DC
I did some simple retouching and that’s it. You can se the double catchlight in her eyes.
You can do this technique with a reflector as well, but I opted for the two light solution this time.
My normal lens for this kind of work is the 70-200 vr, but with being on the road so much these days, I’ve decided to lighten my kit a bit.
I’ve owned the 105 f/2 DC for a while but rarely used it. After shooting this job, I love, love it!!
The Defocus Control lens is a specialty lens that you really need to practice and master as the DC function allows you to change the Bokeh or out-of-focus backgrounds. Here my aperture in camera was set to f/11, but I set my Defocus Control (DC) to f/2. By doing this, I got amazing sharpness in the foreground and let the background falloff while she only stood about 3 feet in front of the blue paper.
That’s it. I’ve got a full round of headshot sittings next week, so I’ll be posting more on them soon.
Till then, happy shooting!