UPDATED: Successful photo shoot, image included!

[Jonathan F/2]

So I got this gig that I gotta do tomorrow where I shoot a model with hands coming over her face. The hands are supposed to come from darkness and cover the mouth.

I currently have a black sheet and a 1000 watt studio light, I also have 3 Flash units. 1 SB-800, 1 SB-600 and an SB-80 DX.

Do I need more lights or reflectors or umbrellas? Any help on this matter would be appreciated! Thanks!

UPDATE: Here is the photo that I shot. The client was happy and it came out the way they wanted!

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[MontyDog]

#1064 - You have an error in your SQL syntax;

 

[biggstr6]

Might be a good time to try some light painting with a spotlight or flashlight.

 

[vincebeus]

So I got this gig that I gotta do tomorrow where I shoot a model with hands coming over her face. The hands are supposed to come from darkness and cover the mouth.

I currently have a black sheet and a 1000 watt studio light, I also have 3 Flash units. 1 SB-800, 1 SB-600 and an SB-80 DX.

Do I need more lights or reflectors or umbrellas? Any help on this matter would be appreciated! Thanks!

Reflectors are not a bad idea. Depends for what you need it to redirect light mostly used for that. Or to block light. You wanted the arms come out of the darkness so maybe you could use reflectors to block the light. Don't have to be reflectors. Are the hands from herself or from somebody else that cover her face. If they are from her maybe you could use some black clothing or sheet to cover the parts you don't want to get lit.

Or maybe frontal light that is bundled to small circle that cover a part of her face and hands. So you could use the other two flashes for hair lighting or seperating her from the backdrop black sheet.

If everything goes allright i can also do my studio work with a pregnant woman. She want some belly shots and other photo's. And she is very artistic minded so i hope i can do a good job for her. I am going to use Chromakey backdrops and use digital backgrounds to replace the Chromakey backdrops. There are some nice programs for that. I will post results soon.

And one more idea is to shoot with good lighting. And i assume you use adobe photoshop. Then create a new layer on top of your photo. Fill that layer with black and lower the ocapicity to 75 % and give it a layer mask and let it reveal all. Now take a soft brush and put it on black and paint on the layer mask to paint in light in her face and hands. You will see a cool effect. It looks like you create darkness on her arms. Play with the opacity to get the right effects. I made a simple example really quickly so you can see what it does.

Here is before and after result:

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Hope this helps you. If you can't get the effect with the reflectors and and black sheet then this is easy and simple solution.

Greetings,
VinceBeus

 

[Jonathan F/2]

Just finished the shoot! Good news...it turned out great!

I kept it ultra simple using the SB-800 flash, mounted on a SC-17 cord and attached a mini softbox. I reduced flash output 1 stop minus. I used a dark navy blue background and then had the hand model draped in black as not to see him. I positioned the flash at an angle and then just fired away. I went for a low key look. I was pretty impressed with the results. Thanks for all the help!

 

[vincebeus]

Great work

 

[Anthony747]

Nice job Jon! Do you think a hand with a little darker skin color would of been better; just to break it up a little from her skin tone? I know its a moot point since your client was happy with your results.

Anthony

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[Gale]

Great job.

Just love the image and the expression is perfect. Can't to my eye see a thing wrong.

Good going.

 

[Gale]

Vince

Really great image. Nicely done :>)))

 

[Jonathan F/2]

Nice job Jon! Do you think a hand with a little darker skin color would of been better; just to break it up a little from her skin tone? I know its a moot point since your client was happy with your results.

Anthony

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Had no control of the models, it was rushed together quickly. The images will be put through some heavy post processing though.

 

[greyflash]

Very nice Johathan. I like it, the customer liked it and you like it . . . . something about great minds . . . .!!!!

 

[Jonathan F/2]

I was going to shoot this with a D70, but after several test...the D70 exposures were coming out completely different than the D2H. The D2H seemed to respond better to the exposure adjustments. I figured since I was shooting all of these shots at f/8 and RAW, the difference in megapixels would be compensated.