A Night With Theresa Louise

This week’s Practical Session was ‘Studio Flash’. This is the first in a series of three sessions where Adrian Court will teach us, and let us practice with Studio Flash on a model.  The aim was to make it as “practical” as possible.  We started with an informal discussion where we discussed the various stages of a shoot from pre-shoot communications and idea gathering, to what is expected during and after the shoot. The biggest point from all three stages was communication:

• Give a clear plan with illustrations (Pinterest is great for this).
• During the shoot show the back of the camera so the model knows what is being created.
• For one-to-one shoots, you can share your images as well as some edits with the model. Set the expectations around what time frame you will do this within the pre-shoot discussions.

We discussed what the initial shoot would involve; outfit, lighting, look we were aiming for.  We built the lights up, starting with the background and then discussing the various different “light modifiers” we had available for the evening (umbrella, softboxes, beauty dish, deep reflector). The setup ended up with two lights on the white paper to blow out the background, both with softboxes attached, and the main light on the model would be bounced into the large umbrella for an even light.

With a single main light, it is important to talk to the model as they normally have a “preferred side”, where they can do more natural poses. Above are three images that are shot from varying angles demonstrating the different looks that were achieved. (R-L: Adrian Court, Roger Goddard, Doug Murrie)

As usual, the first set over-ran while everybody worked with Theresa, discussed ideas and tried different things and shared their results. It was great to see the discussions going on all around the room, with members sharing images and talking through ideas with each other.