Help with Lighting Setup

[CraigDHD]

I'm going to be photographing a local band soon and have been working on a mood board, one of their favourite images, and one I also quite like, is this photo of Kasabian.

Now I'm not going to try and directly copy this image but I do like it but I'll be honest I'm struggling with exactly how I'd light for a similar effect. I'm fine with lighting the seemless but the light on them looking at the shadows around the eyes, neck and jaw seems quite hard and directional with quite a lot of specularity on the leather jacket and leather shoes. This would make me think either just a light in reflector or maybe beauty dish 45 camera right and not too high to keep light in eyes?

The overall light looks quite even though and there is a fairly large reflection in the glasses. I imagine you could even out the spread by increasing the distance of the light but the venness on the clothes and reflection in the glassesmakes me think there is some kind of fill added, though I would have thought that would really impact the depth of the shadows. Could this be done by adding fill off a poly board or similar from the same direction as the key to reduce impact?

I'll be honest hard light isn't something I've used a lot, especially with groups so any advice would be appreciated.

 

[juggler]

Oo, I love dissecting lighting almost as much as I do creating it. It doesn't mean I'll get it right though

Here's a bigger image: http://www.limaeventos.com/conciert...martes-17-de-marzo-2015-jockey-club-del-peru/

I think the key is actually quite high - may be as high as 45 degrees but closer to the camera position that 45 degrees. Look at the angle of the chin shadows on the neck. There are no catch lights and the brow shadows come down all the way to the eyes - but don't encroach on the eyes themselves. It's probably quite far away as there's no significant fall off from right to left. In that case it won't make much difference whether you use a standard reflector or a beauty dish. I don't think there's a grid on it; the shadows on the trousers are still quite hard edged and there's no fall off down the bodies

There's a nice accent light on the camera left jawline of each person. That may just be reflected light from the backdrop.

Again looking at the chin shadows - they decrease in intensity from left to right across the image. That suggests a large polyboard reflector front left.

The specular highlights on the shades, belt and leather jacket say that there's something out front - looks like a polyboard or big softbox fairly low down and immediately to the right of the camera.

Now I'll wait for someone to correct me

 

[Garry Edwards]

Does this help?
Click through to the link and you'll see that we used a strip softbox each side to skim light across the front, it's a simple but very effective technique.

 

[CraigDHD]

Yeah thats pretty much where I was @juggler I agree the highlight looks like from background spill the only parts I'm not sure of is the height, I have a slightly higher res image but I can't post someone elses work so linked to a page that had same image and you can see a catchlight in the guy on the right of the frame also the shadows off the noses look to be falling across more than down so was thinking a above head height but not too high?

Frontal fill was my first though but I feel like it should impact the shadows more if it was on axis although the more I look at it the more I feel like the guy on the right of the frame in general seems to have harder light and I wonder if he's been comped in from another frame as they're seperated so it would be an easy job.

 

[juggler]

Yeah thats pretty much where I was @juggler I agree the highlight looks like from background spill the only parts I'm not sure of is the height, I have a slightly higher res image but I can't post someone elses work so linked to a page that had same image and you can see a catchlight in the guy on the right of the frame also the shadows off the noses look to be falling across more than down so was thinking a above head height but not too high?

Frontal fill was my first though but I feel like it should impact the shadows more if it was on axis although the more I look at it the more I feel like the guy on the right of the frame in general seems to have harder light and I wonder if he's been comped in from another frame as they're seperated so it would be an easy job.

I'm not sure it'll make that much difference to the shadows, depending on your b&w conversion.
Here's an old one - very high (45 degrees or more) key with some front left fill (plus hair & background lights). It's obviously had a bit of post work but there's little or no localised dodging & burning going on. The shadows are still pretty dense. Unfortunately I can't recall what the fill metered at.


Lily by Simon Carter, on Flickr