Field Lighting #9 – Field? Not really…Take a guess!

I’m delinquent again on Field Lighting posts, and I’m unabashedly going to be lazy about this one and let you tell me how I shot it. These two shots were taken from a recent cover shoot for Lubbock Magazine highlighting the colors and tastes of summer. After a few wardrobe changes and a few slices of watermelon, we were set.

So, how was the shot lit? Here’s the deal, if you guess correctly, there might just be a little prize at the end of say, a week from now. So, by next Friday, if someone guesses how the shot was lit (as close to spec as you can get it, if you’ve read the Field Lighting series up until now, you’ll have an idea of how I work), you win something. That’s how Web contests go, right? Why would you even have to know what the prize is, it’s a free guess! (***If there is more than one person, there will be a random drawing for the prize.)

Wait, so where do you put your answers? Just drop them in the comments section (make sure you link to a site or e-mail so I know how to get in touch with the winner).

Simple. Easy (well…). Go now!

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Alright, first things first: Sorry it’s taken so long to get this updated. I’ve officially violated one of the golden rules of blogging…sorta…

In any case, congratulations to nick b, whose comment below came the closest to the lighting setup, which is pictured below. Reverse engineering is one of the greatest ways to learn different lighting techniques, and indeed, it’s a practice I put in place in my lighting and studio courses. Sometimes, I’ll just bring in Joe McNally’s The Moment It Clicks, and we’ll rock and roll for three hours, re-creating the same lighting he uses in many of the images in the book.

For the shots above, I used a 39″ Elinchrom Rotalux octagonal softbox as the key light (you can see it’s an octa-shaped box by looking at the reflection in her sunglasses). An additional light (a 580Ex slaved strobe was placed camera right, behind the model for the more intense kicker on her left, and a larger 24″ rectangle softbox behind her, camera left, for the more subtle rim light on her right. A soft reflector was used to camera left to fill in what the key wasn’t getting on her face, and an even softer reflector was placed below the model, to further alleviate some shadows. A quick pop from a bare flash on the background, and it’s complete!

A reference shot to further illustrate the setup (notice, the 580EX didn’t fire in this shot).

Thanks to everyone that helped out on the shoot, and thanks to everyone that gave the reverse engineering a shot! We all better pitch in and buy good friend, Jeff Lynch some glasses. He couldn’t quite make out the lighting (I kid, Jeff knows a thing or two about lighting).

nick b, since you came the closest, I’m going to send you a signed 12X18 print of the image used for the May desktop calendar. Please use the Contact Me form on the site to send me your information, and I’ll have it to you in no time!

This entry was posted on Friday, May 7th, 2010 at 5:57 pm and is filed under Blog, Field Lighting, Lighting, Photography and tagged with Contest, Field Lighting, Photography, Watermelon, Woohoo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.