Lighting statues

[menthel]

After Garry's thread about photos rather than gear I thought I would share a few. After a lot of help from Garry with regards kit and how to shoot I have finally started cataloguing a collection of statues. Here are four I like. All comments and help welcome. This is my first time ever with studio lights!

I am aware the base is not ideal and any way of fixing it for these in PP would be useful. I will find something better for the future.


Statues 1-63.jpg by menthel, on Flickr


Statues 1-95-Edit.jpg by menthel, on Flickr


Statues 1-113.jpg by menthel, on Flickr


Statues 1-140.jpg by menthel, on Flickr

And here is the lighting setup used!


Camera Roll-571 by menthel, on Flickr

 

[Garry Edwards]

You're doing well with these, but we've run into a problem.

Originally, I said that you should have the softbox a long way away and the reflector as close as possible. The reason for this is that in addition to the fact that reflectors absorb some of the light, lighting energy is also lost because of the effect of the inverse square law - the light reaching one side from the reflector has to be less than the light reaching the other side from the softbox, because it has to travel further. Moving the light a long way away is a massive help with this.

But moving it a long way away caused the problem of over harsh specular highlights, so I told you to move the softbox as close as possible, which cured that problem - but which inevitably caused much more light loss because of the effect of the inverse square law.

I can't remember what you actually bought... If you have two flash heads, the way forward is to ditch the reflector and have a softbox each side.

 

[menthel]

Thanks Garry. I kind of like the look of them this way! I do have 2 heads and soft boxes. In fact the second head was used for a snoot to spot light the background.

We will try 2 soft boxes next time. How far away?

 

[Garry Edwards]

Thanks Garry. I kind of like the look of them this way!

That's fine then. I'm only talking about technical perfection, if you prefer one side brighter than the other there's nothing wrong with that

We will try 2 soft boxes next time. How far away?

Depends. If the subjects are shiny, the softboxes need to be as close as possible. If they're not, and you want harder lighting to reveal the texture better, move them further away.

 

[menthel]

That's fine then. I'm only talking about technical perfection, if you prefer one side brighter than the other there's nothing wrong with that

Depends. If the subjects are shiny, the softboxes need to be as close as possible. If they're not, and you want harder lighting to reveal the texture better, move them further away.

Thanks again Garry. Will try some experiments next time we set up.