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My first "Hair" shoot
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Well after all my worrying about my first “hair” shoot, I really enjoyed myself,
a great bunch of girls both stylists and models, this is just a couple of my favourites
from the evening, please be honest and free with suggestions for improvement :)
Hi Jenny,
Some great hair there! Expressions are very fitting too :) Great for a first try at this kind of thing.
A couple of things jump out at me on the technical side though. The light is flat, both are pretty one-dimensional and sadly a touch under-exposed :( What do you use for lighting? A basic kit would be a shoot-through umbrella and reflector and some more distance between subject and the background (notice the unsightly shadow on no.2). A better kit would include a hairlight up above and behind the subject coming back towards camera and a background light to bleach out the greyness behind.
You would want a main light (ie. the umbrella) above the subject and to one side (say 45 degrees and a foot and a half higher, 4 or 5 feet away), with the reflector in front of the person, below the chest line angled back up towards the main light. You dont want both sides of the head fully illuminated or you’re back to one-dimension, some shadow is necessary to add shape to the face. If you have another flash to use as a hairlight, you could put this another couple of feet above the person, well behind them and angled down to catch the outline of the hair. This light should be quite subtle though, you don’t want it to look like they are standing in front of a nuclear detonation!
Overall though it looks like you worked well with the models and that’s the hardest part, you can learn the techie stuff but if you’re not a people person it would be much tougher going!
Post some more and keep us up to date with your progress :)
Ken
Ken …….Thanks for the encouragement! My lights leave a lot to be desired I’m afraid, main light wasnt really
strong enough 300w continuous, the second light was to the other side low to the floor angled up, I had reflectors
everywhere :) but they probably werent doing much good, a 6′ x 4′ silver reflector (aka a picnic blanket thermal
side up) was on the floor in front of the models. My downfall was using the flash on the camera I think was set
to high and caused awful shadows on some of them…….these two were the better ones. They were standing
about 5′ away from the backdrop should that have been more? But as I got more into the evening I really enjoyed
it and that I am pleased about, I shall invest in some decent lighting I think!! :)Mick…….Thanks! I liked the second one also, and I like it even more now you have had a go :) I shall go through
the link and learn how to replicate!!Thanks guys :)
Looks great Jenny, although, you know, what those two just said…
Mick’s edit is a definite improvement-
that’s some attitude that girl has,
you should work with that….Thanks Joseph :) Long way to go on processing but I am looking
forward to next one so that I can put all this good advice to use!!Cool processing on that one Mick! Really makes that photo sing.
Mick is of course correct in saying that fashion portraiture can be completely flat, the big idea with fashion is to stretch and break the rules of lighting that I mentioned above. A common technique is to use a large source directly above the camera and either another large light or reflector under the camera to get almost shadowless light. This is usually done in conjunction with a good make-up artist who knows how to ‘sculpt’ the features of the face with heavy make up to give a 3-d look in normally processed photos or else the features are bleached out as per the photoshop wizadry above!
Love the second one great for a first attempt must have been a steep learning curve
Thanks flim flam, yes it really was, but I think the scariest part was knowing
if I messed up it was too late to do anything about it, with hair especially as
trying to replicate would have been nearly impossible.
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