Opera Romance in Red

On December 29^th, I did a test shoot with the lovely Anastasia, to test out a new piece of equipment I received for Christmas. I got a snoot for my strobes and wanted to test it, to see how much strobe power I would lose while using it.  A snoot is just cone/tube that directs the light. Mine is black inside and outside so I lose a lot of light by using it to create a spotlight effect. But this piece of equipment is very handy for recreating certain types of lighting styles.

For this session I used:

Photography Equipment	Props/Miscellaneous
Cannon 80D Transmitter/Trigger 3 strobes 2 c-stands 1 light stand 1 Backdrop stands Grey backdrop Sandbags 2 Rectangular Soft boxes Grids snoot	2 foot posing cube 1.5 foot posing cube Rose

The set up

For this shoot I kept the set up fairly simple.  I used a large grey backdrop, and placed two posing blocks in the center of it.  From there I placed two strobes with square soft boxes on either side of posing blocks, angled away from the back drop. The goal of these two strobes were to act as fill and produce a little bit of rim light.  The main strobe which had the snoot on it, was placed on a light stand and moved around based on the position of the model. I started with it up and about 45 degrees off my left as seen in the diagram below.   Now throughout the course of the shoot, I did modify the placement of the soft boxes slightly, and did remove the grids for some of the last shots of the session.

Starting Lighting Diagram

Camera Settings

For this session I used ISO 100 with an aperture of F8, and shutter speed of 1/250s. My focal length ranged from 18mm to 50mm with most of the images being taken at 28mm.  By keeping the same camera setting throughout the sessions, all I needed to do was dial in the lighting then just worry about composition.  For the lighting the two with soft boxes and grids were at about 1/16 to 1/8 power. While the strobe with the snoot on it was at about ½ power.

The Photos

My original thinking for this session was to do something that was a bit more noire, but the dress I borrowed from Book a Look, was not a classic noire look it was more romantic and frilly. While I still used the basic lighting concepts of noire, I felt the dress, combined with the props, and the model’s poses leaned more towards romantic renaissance images. I personally, after looking through all the images as a whole, got an opera leading lady vibe from the session.

This first image I think leads you to believe the model is a heroine, in some tragic opera, who is pining for her love. In this shot the snooted strobe was to my left and the two soft boxes were providing fill light.  To edit the image, I started with the white balance pulling to the cooler side of the spectrum. I then adjusted the exposure up slightly, reduced clarity to soften the image, while using a medium contract tone curve. From there I adjusted the color, by reducing the saturation of orange in the skin tone, while also increasing the luminance. I then reduced any noise in the image.  I then applied a small radial mask to the model’s face to brighten it up just a touch more. Finally I applied a blue (shadows) / orange (highlights) color grade and a medium vignette, which pulls together the whole image.  I then pulled the image into photoshop to clean up skin blemishes, and do some dodge and burn work to give the image a more polished feel.

 

This next image was a result of a happy accident.  The shot before this one the snooted strobe didn’t fire and I like the look.  So I planned it for this image, by turning off the snooted strobe, lowing the power slightly on the strobe to my right, and upping the power slightly on the strobe to my left. Then turning the model a bit more towards the strobe to my left, to get the resulting image. I really like the short lighting in this image, as it changes the mood from soft pining romance to a possible heartache ache or disdain for love. To edit the image, I started with the white balance pulling to the cooler side of the spectrum. I then adjusted the exposure up slightly, reduced clarity to soften the image, while using a medium contract tone curve. I did watch my highlights and shadows for this image as they are important to telling the overall story of the image. From there I adjusted the color, by reducing the saturation of orange in the skin tone, while also increasing the luminance. I then reduced any noise in the image.  Finally I applied a blue (shadows) / orange (highlights) color grade and a medium vignette, which pulls together the whole image.  I then pulled the image into photoshop to clean up skin blemishes, and do some dodge and burn work following the natural shadows and highlights to give the image a more polished feel.

This next image I like because it looks like the model is in a tangle of red satin sheets, but it is only the dress. I also feel this image has a nice seductive yet romantic feel to it. For this image the snooted strobe was to my left aimed at the model’s face.  The soft box to the left was lowered and tilted slightly to fill shadows on the left. Then I lowered the right soft box and brought it around to about 15 degrees off my right hand side to fill in the shadows on the right. I then stood on a small step ladder and shot down towards the model.  In post I followed all the same steps as in the previous images, and added a small radial filter to the model’s face to brighten it just a touch. Now there was one problem with this dress, which were the cups were not exactly big enough to support the model. So, the dress would occasionally slip slightly showing the top edge of the bra.  I removed the top edge of the bra in this image, while doing the basic skin clean up. I also did some dodge and burn work to enhance the shadows and highlights in the image.

For this last photo, I went with a more stylized matte look. The lighting for this image used my starting light set up, with the two soft boxes creating side and fill light, while the snoot providing the main light for the model’s face.  Now the thing to remember with a snooted light source, is it creates a very small section of light the model must stay in to be fully lit.  In this case the model moved slightly outside of where the light was pointed creating the short light look. In post I followed all the same basic editing steps as in the first image. However, in this case I applied a preset, that flattened the blacks and whites in the tone curve to produce a matte look. I then applied a blue (shadows) / orange (highlights) color grade and a heavy vignette.  In photoshop I just cleaned up the skin slightly, and did some minor dodge and burn work to get rid of some hot spots.  Overall, I feel the finished image is very soft and painterly.

As usual it was great working with Anastasia. She always brings great energy to set and taps into her acting skills to help create memorable images with emotion and drama.  I ended up with a ton of great images from this shoot you can see them all here: Romance in Red.

Credits:

Model: Anastasia (Instagram: @brunklestein)

Dress: Book a Look: DMV Virginia Dress Rentals (@bookalooker)

Set Design: Heather of Munchkin Photos (Instagram: @munckin_photos_by_heather)