Karolina P - studio session - Image Rich

[Manfred M]

I spent a few hours shooting in a professional studio at a charity event for a local hospital; time and money donated for a worthy cause. The model, Karolina, was doing this for the first time. We had hair stylist and makeup artist on site as well. Full studio lighting as well.

This shot was taken against a white cyclorama, so the whole background was completely seamless.

In this shot I had Karolina facing away from me and pivoting 180 degrees at which point she stopped and looked at the camera. This gave her dress a beautiful flow.

I'm starting to get better at this aspect of photography, but still have a long way to go.


#1 - Model twirling fancy dress #1





#2 - Model twirling fancy dress #2





#3 - Model in dress sitting #1





#4 - Model in dress sitting #2





#5 - Model on Ducati #1






#6 - Model on Ducati #2





#7 - Model against red seamless background #1





#8 - Model against red seamless background #2

[mugge]

Manfred, this is certainly different coming from you. I like the flow of the dress. Do not like the lighting on her face however, then again cannot see any PP so that should explain it.
Cheers Ole

[Dave A]

Love the motion in the dress captured so well. Nice image Manfred.

Dave

[Manfred M]

Manfred, this is certainly different coming from you. I like the flow of the dress. Do not like the lighting on her face however, then again cannot see any PP so that should explain it.
Cheers Ole

Thanks Ole - I've taken up this style of photography because (a) I had the opportunity to get into it and (b) as a way of forcing myself out of my comfort zone by learning something new. New to me are the posing, shooting, lighting and retouching side of things. I'm posting the shots precisely for that reason and getting feedback so that I can improve. I'm hoping that my experiences from this photographic genre migrate to my street and portraiture work.

With both the model and me doing this type of shoot for the first time, I am at the very beginning of the learning curve. The charity shoot aspect meant that there were a lot more photographers shooting (there were seven of us), so we had about three minutes of shooting per set. The challenge of this motion shot was getting the model to hit her mark and me to get the shot timing bang on; she had to do a fast 180 degree rotation (to get the dress moving) and hit the mark where I had prefocused and look at the camera. I had to get the timing of the exposure just right.

The right side of the face has been extensively retouched because of the body movement caused the hair to fly all over the place. Unfortunately, with the large number of shooters, we only had 3 minutes with the model for each pose, which left little time for changing the lighting. The lighting was set up to be flat on the mark, but the bounce on the camera right side of the face came in about a stop lower than planned. I'm going to spend some more time on PP and may repost it. I expect I will add some more images from this shoot for comments.

[rpcrowe]

Hi Manfred...

Nice job...

I was just wondering about the distances involved (camera to subject distance and subject to background) as well as the focal length/format used...

It seems pretty difficult to accomplish a shot like this unless there is ample of space?

Often with this type of shoot, there isn't enough space afforded for several photographers as well as the model.

Was that the case with your shoot and if so, How did you work around it?

As an aside: I have been wanting to shoot a ballerina or ballerinas in a ballet studio but, have not had the opportunity...

[Donald]

I'm just going to watch and learn!

[IzzieK]

I'm just going to watch and learn!

Same here..I am with Ole that I do not like the shine and position of her face. I was wondering whether in her fast rotation she could have had her face with a sideway sexy look instead of full on? I would like to know what others will say too, apart from you. It would have been nice if Colin is still here. He is an expert...

[Dave Humphries]

I'm just going to watch and learn!

Me too.

I tried to put something helpful in to words and failed, perhaps fresh eyes in the morning will help.

[Manfred M]

Same here..I am with Ole that I do not like the shine and position of her face. I was wondering whether in her fast rotation she could have had her face with a sideway sexy look instead of full on? I would like to know what others will say too, apart from you. It would have been nice if Colin is still here. He is an expert...

I suspect my level of expertise in portraiture is not far off from Colin's, but this is not portaiture, rather it is editorial / fashion photography. The shoot was being led by someone with 30+ years experience in the field. His view was that the position and motion required the model ending her spin in the position in that I have captured here.

That being said, I don't love the lighting either and if I had the studio to myself for a few hours I would have tried a bit differently (cost by the way would be $CAD 600 for a 4-hour session with two lights).

This shot of the studio (taken at 24mm with a FF camera), with me standing as far back as I can. The light in the back by the model is the background light and the light beside the other photographer who is fiddling with the fan is the key light. Landing position of model was about 2m / 6ft in front of the key light.

In the shot, one can see the curvature of the cyclorama, from the model's shadow. The sweep continues at the back and around the corner as well.

[Manfred M]

Often with this type of shoot, there isn't enough space afforded for several photographers as well as the model.

100% correct on that thought Richard.

The studio was around 2000 square feet / 185 square metres, but that includes a makeup room that accomodates three models and makeup artists at the same time, work space, washrooms, showers, storage, lobby, etc. so the actual studio was probably just over half of the total space. With two people from the studio, a makeup artist, a hair person, the model and seven photographers, it really was too crowded to work to work comfortably. Likewise with seven shooters, we ended up having about three minutes of shooting time with the model for each set. The rest of the time was changing the lighting and having the model / makeup / hair work done between the sets. We were there for around three hours in total.

[Shadowman]

Nicely done.

[Manfred M]

I've updated with seven more shots from the shoot, with two shots from each set. The only set I left out was the bikini set.

And yes, the studio owner had two Ducati motorcycles in the studio for use as props.

The shot with the red seamless paper was quite interesting when I converted from my default ProPhoto colour space to sRGB for web posts, the colour changed quite noticeably, so I went back and played around with the exposure until I can up with a background where the colour shift was less noticeable during conversion.

[mugge]

Manfred, looking at your latest pics I think your biggest tests is to get rid of reflecting noses and metallic surfaces. On a more important note we live in an area where there are lots of cafes. Several have Ducatis actually hanging on walls. Why I have no idea. When I was a young I had a 3/4 horsepower moped. I need a scotch, Talisker 18 year old right now with an eye drop of water.
Cheers Ole

[george013]

The model is standing in a corner, with 3 axes. All these axes seem to be curved. How did they managed that?

George

[William W]

. . . I've taken up this style of photography because (a) I had the opportunity to get into it and (b) as a way of forcing myself out of my comfort zone by learning something new. New to me are the posing, shooting, lighting and retouching side of things. I'm posting the shots precisely for that reason and getting feedback so that I can improve. I'm hoping that my experiences from this photographic genre migrate to my street and portraiture work. . .
The challenge of this motion shot was getting the model to hit her mark and me to get the shot timing bang on; she had to do a fast 180 degree rotation (to get the dress moving) and hit the mark where I had prefocused and look at the camera. I had to get the timing of the exposure just right. . .
The shoot was being led by someone with 30+ years experience in the field. His view was that the position and motion required the model ending her spin in the position in that I have captured here. . .

Fantastic to push your comfort zone.

A couple of points you might consider and/or ask about, referring only to the techniques and the making of Image 1.

> Her spin is in the direction coming out of the Key light and into the Fill Light. Did you discuss that? Typically I’d have the movement into the key light, the main reason being any movement trailing blur is easier to manage.

> My guess is the Studio Ambient almost certainly was too bright. Did you discuss that, especially with respect to the goal of a making freeze on a spinning model?

WW

[Manfred M]

I kind of agree on the reflections, Ole. All of the images are very heavily burned in on all the hot spots, but if I went any further with the burning, the reflections started to go gray, so that looks even worse than the hot spots. A bit of heat and a bit of shadow adds dimension, so this is a matter of degree rather than trying to avoid it totally.

In studio portraiture work I found these to be less of an issue, so I'm not sure why this was happening to the degree it was. In some of the shots, we were using unbaffled lights, and that does cast a harder light, but in others we were not. I tend to shoot with my lights much closer to the subject than we were last night and in fact, I often have the softboxes just at the edges of the frame and even intruding into the frame a bit. That tends to give a much softer light, but one can still get hot spots on oily skin. Once the light modifiers are more than twice the diagonal (we were using rectangular soft boxes) away from the subject, the light starts getting a bit harder and that seems to have played a role as well.

The makeup and model's skin might also have been a factor. The studio was getting quite warm with the dozen or so people in it.

The other issue I ran into is the eye makeup. I was doing a lot of full body shots and 3/4 shots and ended up having to dodge the eyes quite intensively. I tend to shoot with fill light quite often and that does lift the shadows, but I could not convince anyone to shoot with fill light yesterday, so I saw the same issue (and worse) with the other postings because the shadows from the key light were not well controlled.

I have another shoot with the same photographer who set up this shoot tomorrow, except that I am bringing and setting up my own studio light outside for the shoot. I'm going to chat to him about it and see why he decided to set up the lights the way he did.

As for reflections off the metal, especially off curved surfaces, that is going to be the case and I find that it adds to the shot, if there isn't too much of it. It gives the shot life, just like catchlights in the eyes do.

[rpcrowe]

This has nothing to do with photography but, I don't really think that Karolina's hairdo's flatter her rather long face. In the more formal hairdo's (in the dress shots) the hair piled towards the top of her hear simply elongates an already long face. A long face can be beautiful. But...

If I had been designing her hairdo for the shots, I would have tried bangs of some type with hair flowing down the side of her face. Something along this line...



I think that virtually any of these hair styles would have flattered Karolina...

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/147633694009812222

Of course, I am not a hair stylist but I have been looking at the female face for 77 years (tomorrow) and know what I prefer

[Manfred M]

Richard - I found that the model looked best in the shots where she was "being herself", i.e. the ones with the red background.

I think that was a combination of it being the last series of shots, so she was getting into a shooting rhythm as well as something that was more in character / something she would be out wearing day-to-day. You are quite right that bangs would do less to accentuate the shape of her face.

Unfortunately, neither of us had a say in either the costumes of her hairstyle. She also had a nice green one-piece bathing suit that I thought looked better on her than the red two-piece we ended up shooting.

[rpcrowe]

I fully understand that in a shoot of this type, the photographer doesn't have the control that you might have in another "type" of shoot?

[Manfred M]

I fully understand that in a shoot of this type, the photographer doesn't have the control that you might have in another "type" of shoot?

Agreed. but as I look at this photographic genre as a learning experience, I'm actually okay with anything.

Right now I'm working on getting the poses working for me, learning how to direct the model as well as getting some shots to practice my PP skills. The post processing is completely different than the "stuff" done to the travel / landscape / street photography images.

I'm off to another shoot in about 40 minutes, so should have some interesting images to show...

"Dual Model Shoot: Creepy Dolls"

https://www.meetup.com/The-Ottawa-Ph...nts/239927091/