Imitation

Today, for the first time I enjoyed a Photo Shoot assignment and did it with confidence! I actually knew what I was doing and felt good about it! Wow, I must be learning something in these classes after all.  Who knew? Not me. We were given famous photos of actresses, and had to mimic the lighting situations- never done this before, so its a great first for the day! This was challenging because you had to determine how the shadows/highlights were created by which kind of lights and how many lights. You can have a simple setup with one light, or a difficult set-up with three lights!  Surprisingly, there are tons of different ways to manipulate the light as well; it's not just putting a light by the model and taking a photo. You can add scrims, grids or beauty dishes, or umbrellas or soft boxes to make the light harder or softer, bigger or smaller. There are many combinations of all of this, so to figure out how a Photographer did a particular kind of Photo is actually pretty hard. You have to examine how the light falls on the subject and the direction of the light. I've never examined shadows under someone's nose in such depth before. It was interesting!!

The first shot we did, was Gwen Stefani's photo on the cover of Rolling Stone. We believe she had one large "beauty dish" right above her, to create the small shadow below her nose, and very little shadows elsewhere. We put a soft box slightly to the right of her, to create a slight shadow on her upper abs and side of face. We also placed a small floor light behind her to light up the background with a grid on it to create a bit of a gradient. The background was impossible to do, and took at least an hour to figure out! A lot of work goes in to one single photo- it's quite incredible! I've never had appreciation for this kind of Photography until now.

This photo is a photo of a photo of a photo, so it's terrible quality but you can kind of see the shadows and light we were trying to imitate!  We used an obvious background light to create the halo; the light had a grid on it for the gradient. We also had a small beauty light very high above her to create the very significant shadow under her right nostril and right neck.  We then placed a "hair light" directly behind her shining down to light up the hair. The model we had, did not have the same hair, so we worked with what we had. She also doesn't have that "model" quality and I was surprised she was hired to model for us! Anyone would look terrible compared to Natalie Portman, but she doesn't strike me as someone photogenic. She did have the flu, so I'll give her that. 

Here's my versions of the shots! Based purely on the light, I think we did a pretty good job. We'll find out next class what the Professor thinks: he usually critiques pretty hard, but I always learn something! :)