Controlling highlights on dark and black skin ?

M

MidnightUK

Suspended / Banned
Messages
889
Name
Jay
Edit My Images
Yes
I wonder if any of you have any particular tips on highlight control or portrait photography lighting in general for people of quite dark skin tones?

An example of the sort of issue I wish to avoid is in this photo by Peter Hurley, where the ladies nose has an unflattering glowing end from his lighting system, that I think would not show up as quite such an issue in a pale skinned person due to there being less contrast between skin and light fall. I imagine it must have looked quite a bit worse before the retouching softened it.

https://photos.peterhurley.com/site...5/02/37/deborah©peterhurley.jpg?itok=jqV9O_23
 
I don't like to be critical of other people's work but personally I wouldn't use such a complicated lighting arrangement on a model with those looks - she has high cheekbones that can be lit beautifully with a single small softbox, or beauty dish, in the classical high and straight on position.
IMO the problem with the specular highlight on her nose is entirely due to the light at the camera position, made worse by the high level of sharpening.

Back to your question - it isn't about skin colour or tone, it's 80% about light placement, 20% about having the right (matt) makeup.
 
Thanks for the reply Garry, its helpful as always. I get the impression he works with a standard set up and hardly changes it, as he finds it desirable / suitable in most cases for the purpose of actor headshots.
 
MidnightUK said:
I wonder if any of you have any particular tips on highlight control or portrait photography lighting in general for people of quite dark skin tones?

An example of the sort of issue I wish to avoid is in this photo by Peter Hurley, where the ladies nose has an unflattering glowing end from his lighting system, that I think would not show up as quite such an issue in a pale skinned person due to there being less contrast between skin and light fall. I imagine it must have looked quite a bit worse before the retouching softened it.

https://photos.peterhurley.com/sites/default/files/styles/big/public/photos/2015/02/37/deborah©peterhurley.jpg?itok=jqV9O_23
Click to expand...
wow slagging of a peter hurley photo you must be amazing...can i see some of your work ;)
 
MidnightUK said:
Thanks for the reply Garry, its helpful as always. I get the impression he works with a standard set up and hardly changes it, as he finds it desirable / suitable in most cases for the purpose of actor headshots.
Click to expand...
He has a very successful business model, and like lots of successful business models, it's simple, easily repeatable, and in his case, completely reliant on his personality.

Is his lighting great? No
But his subject 'engagement' is right up with the best. He might be full of himself, but he knows how to make people feel great about themselves too.
 
dinorock said:
wow slagging of a peter hurley photo you must be amazing...can i see some of your work ;)
Click to expand...
As Phil rightly says, he has a very successful business model.
So too does MacDonalds, Vodaphone, British Gas and a host of other businesses that are known for their consistency rather than for excellence.
Popularity usually translates to success, it doesn't necessarily suggest excellence.

Closer to home, Venture set up their first portrait studio based on appallingly one-size-fits-all flat lighting and built it up into a highly successful franchise. It was poor in terms of lighting but it also required minmial or zero photographic skills and so it was repeatable in every outlet, just like MacDonalds.
Then people wanted to cash in on the concept of overlit, over-processsed white background shots without investing in a proper-sized studio, so they bought themselves a glorified softbox that they used as a background and ended up with results that were even worse than Venture's, because they also introduced image flare and wrap from the background. Did that matter? No, because they sold their products to a public who thought that they were actually good, which is all that matters in the business world.

Back to your point. I'm sure that Mr. Hurley is capable of producing good lighting, but I feel that this standardised lighting setup isn't suitable for this particular model.
I'm sure that he doesn't care what I think of his lighting, which is fine because I don't care what he thinks of me either - there's plenty of room for divergence of opinion.
 
If you mean me, I was not slagging off Peter Hurley, just using this one photo as an example of lighting issues. I am not, unfortunatly, experienced with photographing darker skins and I noticed this darker skin problem in his book, which includes an image (maybe the same one, not sure) with the nose issue..

Hurley is branching out quite substantially into teaching - he is sort of franchising his lighting to people all over the world. He is also moving into outdoor shooting and seems to be getting advertising work. I like some of his images quite a bit, he is effective at what he does , He is clearly learning to branch out as he has mostly been studio work before from what he says. I find his You Tube videos via B and H to be interesting.

But that blip on her nose is still rubbish!

I am sure if you saw my own photos you would find loads of terrible errors :-)
 
We seem to be drifting away from any helpful tips on darker skin photography, any one got any other tips? I dont want to let sitters down by making silly errors from my inexperience.
 
Dark skin should present no worse problems than lighter skin, but mistakes may exaggerate issues.

Avoid shiny skin and minimise specular highlights
 
MidnightUK said:
We seem to be drifting away from any helpful tips on darker skin photography, any one got any other tips? I dont want to let sitters down by making silly errors from my inexperience.
Click to expand...

Make-up is the easy answer here, as mentioned above. A very light dusting of matt powder is pretty standard fare in portrait photography, with subjects of either sex, dark or light skin. Trying to tone it down with lighting would affect and change the whole image obviously.

Or you could try and fix it in post, but correcting problems at source is usually the better way.
 
As I and others have said, although some black skin can be more shiny than some caucasian skin, there are generally no special lighting requirements.

All that I would add to this is that if the subject has afro hair and if you want to use a hairlight, you'll need far more lighting power for this than you'd expect, because afro hair is dense and non-reflective - simple enough to do with digital though. First time I tried it was with film, and I got a bit of a shock at the amount of lighting power needed:)
 
Here you go 2 different colours father and son but zero diffrance in exposure. just keep your flash exposure as low as possible so as not to create hi lights on the skin.cheers mike i also agree the make up artist should have sorted this ;)

father and Son by Mike Rockey, on Flickr
 
Last edited:
dinorock said:
Here you go 2 different colours father and son but zero diffrance in exposure. just keep your flash exposure as low as possible so as not to create hi lights on the skin.cheers mike

father and Son by Mike Rockey, on Flickr
Click to expand...
In fact, the size (and intensity) of the specular highlights has nothing to do with the flash power, it's controlled entirely by the relative size and distance of the light shaper.
 
Garry Edwards said:
In fact, the size (and intensity) of the specular highlights has nothing to do with the flash power, it's controlled entirely by the relative size and distance of the light shaper.
Click to expand...
I agree gary this was shot with an on board nikon sb900 with standard nikon diffuser and power set to 1/16 power.cheers mike.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top