Self Portraits for Lighting Practice (9 pics) - Printable Version

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Self Portraits for Lighting Practice (9 pics) - Rabid Penguin - Apr 17, 2008

Had a bit of a play around with lighting yesterday, experimenting with flashes in different positions and using different light shapers. I was concentrating mainly on practicing with fill flash; the main light used in most of these was sunlight through a window. The first 2 are with no flash at all, and with the last one, the sun had gone down so I used a flash reflected off a car sunvisor hung on the window. These are my favourites out of 50.

#1




#2 (personal favourite)




#3




#4




#5




#6




#7




#8




#9




I really want to improve my lighting skills, so feedback would be appreciated.

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Self Portraits for Lighting Practice (9 pics) - Irma - Apr 18, 2008

I was working in the same yesterday...

Please, take my comment more like a personal taste than to say good or wrong, I am also learning...

I find them a bit flat and not too interesting ...
#4 and #6 I think the light is too much and you don't have interesting shadows.

I like your idea in #1 and #2 both are great.
I don't know if a bit of detail in the shadow area would be fine just to give a hint. I like the result as it is anyway.

You are working with a light above in the left side, and this makes very nice work. I didn't do it with mine and I have a hard shadow.

I like very much the lighting in #9 because the light lines nicely the left side. But I think a little less light in the left would be nicer so you don't have the hard shadow line in your nose.

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Self Portraits for Lighting Practice (9 pics) - Rabid Penguin - Apr 18, 2008

I totally know what you mean about them being flat and uninteresting. They're pretty much all just standard mugshots. That really wasn't the goal though, the whole point was just playing with lighting to see what results I could get.

I think thing i need most is more space, so I can put lights further away so they're less harsh. Following that I would really like a 3rd strobe, and some proper lighting stands and umbrellas. But, that won't happen for at least a year unfortunately.

But thanks for the honest feedback. I reckon I much prefer shooting landscapes etc than doing studio photography.

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Self Portraits for Lighting Practice (9 pics) - Zig - Apr 18, 2008

The point you've just made anout preferring landscapes can be a good way in here..I say this, as i have the same aversion to controlled conditions: do a few outside in natural light, using just fill-flash yet experimenting with rear-curtain synch for different effects? I wonder if too that you might go the other way as regards lighting: to begin with, go less rather than more perhaps? A lot can be done with positioning the model/subject in natutal light/composition, then just using onboard camera flash as fill. Something effective is shooting at twilight using rear-curtain fill-flash...you're reducing the variables too rather than juggling a a whole lot of new ones.

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