Head shot lighting

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DCL152

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Hello everyone, this is my first of hopefully many posts.

I have teamed up with a MUA who does some funky stuff on lips and I am wanting to do basic head shots of these. Kind of like this photo.

http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hpho...0114897167153_622942152_6526216_4394065_n.jpg

My question is, there any chance I can achieve this lighting with my flash gun?

I am seriously short of funds as I am in the process of converting my cellar into a studio and so I cannot afford a ring flash right now.

Thank you.
 
Hi and welcome.

Yep that was shot with one light and not a ring flash either. You'd be able to get pretty close with you flash gun, but not identical, in my opinion :)
 
I'd just use a softbox or umbrella for the top light and add a white reflector below to get the fill you want.
 
treeman said:
Hi and welcome.

Yep that was shot with one light and not a ring flash either. You'd be able to get pretty close with you flash gun, but not identical, in my opinion :)
Click to expand...

You sure it's not a ring? Looks like off camera ring slightly above with hard fill (silver bounce) from lower left. But hard to tell from a small web crop.
 
The catchlight in the eyes certainly looks like a ring flash.
 
It looks like it was lit by a beauty dish to me. If it was a ring light the lighting should be much flatter and you wouldn't have a fill with a ring light as it fills everything by itself that close anyway.
 
Well I had a go and I think I did pretty well. I have made a diffuser similar to the demb flash diffuser. Test shots as soon as I can convince someone at work to let me take photos.

183537_204679806225038_168666949826324_778937_1410931_n.jpg
 
That's typical of the effect from a beauty dish at a very close distance.
But it could be a ringflash, used not on camera but in the beauty dish position (directly in front of where the model is looking and above).

Fact is, that image has been so heavily shopped that it's hard to be sure.

You won't get that sort of effect with any kind of diffuser or bounce whatsit, it needs to be a strongly directional light that moulds the face and creates shadows in the right places, not that removes them. You can get small beauty dishes for hotshoe flashguns, I've never used one and frankly I doubt whether they are big enough, but I could be wrong about that if you can position it close enough.

Or you could use a s-fit adapter on your flash and buy a studio beauty dish, but that will be more expensive.

Or you could use an Octa softbox, remove the diffusers and replace the inner diffuser with reflective material that bounces the light back, turning it into a substitute for a beauty dish
 
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A small, say 18", silver reflective umbrella used up close will give a similar look to the light on the subject but you won't get the polo mint catchlight.
 
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