Always Changing The Recipe

Metro Detroit Childrens Beauty Pageant Photography by Mary DuPrie

Doing a full length white high key is time consuming.  I don’t have a permanent cyc to turn to so I have to set everything up from scratch.  If I was starting the studio from scratch I would definitely put that high on my list of must have’s.  Not including the floor is pretty easy, but once you include the feet it’s much harder to get a clean image.   If I was shooting a commercial client I would set up six lights for full length high key.

During a comp card shoot or quickie shoot six lights is just not something I’m going to do.  So each time I do a high key I change it up.  This set up was totally new and I was trying to do it with only three lights.  The floor only turned out so so, a bit dirty looking, it needed some cloning to match the seamless.

I put my Alien Bee Ring Light on an extension arm 6ft in front of the model and used two white shoot through umbrellas for the background, floor, hair and rim lights on Elizabeth.  The umbrellas were 6ft behind the model.  The white seamless is 14ft from the umbrellas.   Quick and easy, but needs some tweaking.

I used two large black flats to keep stray light out of my lens, which is part of my normal work flow.

I don’t mind a bit of bounce back on the model at all, I tend to exploit it.

4 comments category: Photographing models

1 Andy October 18, 2010 at 4:21 pm

If you take only one thing from his technique- invest in the tile board. It is so much better than shooting on paper or vinyl.

Reply

2 Mary DuPrie October 18, 2010 at 8:46 pm

yes, i wish i would of bought that before i bought $120. plex! i would of saved $110 a sheet… boo hoo

Reply

3 Todd October 18, 2010 at 6:49 am

Mary,

You’ve probably already seen this, but I thought I’d pass this on to you just in case. It’s Zack Arias’s technique for setting up full body white seamless shots using home depot tileboards:

http://www.zarias.com/white-seamless-tutorial-part-1-gear-space/

I’ve tried it out and it seems to work pretty well:
http://mizomi.blogspot.com/2010/06/trying-out-new-studio-lighting.html
Todd recently posted..Another weekend shoot with TJ

Reply

4 Mary DuPrie October 18, 2010 at 8:46 pm

ahhh yes, i’m familiar with it…works great

Reply

Leave a Comment

CommentLuv badge

Previous post:

Next post: