Genna Macmillan – Butterfly Lighting
My roommates are good sports to let me take photos of them. This is my roommate Genna, and I used my reflector to get this butterfly lighting. I don’t own any external lights so I decided to try to use my reflector to get lighting patterns. The reflector creates an effect that is really soft, which is great for females. We did this at 1pm when the sun was really bright and I had one roommate hold the reflector above my head and reflect the light down on Genna’s face. The light from above creates a shadow underneath the nose that looks like the shape of a butterfly. I used a faster shutter speed of 1/500 and an ISO of 100.
Melia Winters – Rembrandt Lighting
Melia was also great to help me get good head shots. This time Genna held the reflector and put the light on Melia’s face from an angle. The light forms a triangle on Melia’s left cheek which creates Rembrandt light. I kept my camera settings the same as for the previous photo with an F-stop of 4.5. After capturing these images, I pulled them into Photoshop and did retouching to bring out their eyes and smooth the skin. Head shots are about the only time I do a lot of face retouching because you are so up close and personal with the subject.
Doug Phan – Split Lighting
I took this photo at the end of my professional imaging class on Thursday. We used a a large external light to capture the different patterns that light creates on faces. This is split lighting because only half of his face is lit. I originally had Doug facing me, but then I had him slowing turn to the right until I had the effect I was looking for. I had to have a high ISO of 400 and a shutter speed of 1/50. Then I pulled this into Photoshop and I actually had to create all of the white space in the right of the photo because I didn’t have much in the original.