More lighting

I got the chance to shoot some pictures for a new album coming out soon by a great you artist named Adrina Thorpe. For more see www.adrinathorpe.com We wanted a very strong image that would be tight enough that it would help with face recognition, but still have a studio/stage feel to it. There is the picture that everyone sees and then there is the story of how you got the shoot. I believe her new is album is going to be called light and shadows. With that in mind she wanted a picture that was strong on contrast, and made use of some creative lighting. Not wanting to brake the bank it was time to get creative. We have an old piano that came to us with three coats of paint, pink, white, and yellow. After a lot of paint stripper and chemical burns I had it back to the original wood. Because I had spend a lot of time with this piano I knew the front came off without much effort. As the piano is Adrina's chief instrument, making use of a tired old piano as a backdrop seemed like a good place to start. Behind the piano is a wooden doweled room divider which I could hang a black backdrop off of. Behind all this her little one and my three are at the table thinking up ways to get into trouble. One of the things that really helps make portraits look much more professional is using light from above. It tends to outline a head so it stands out from the background. With this in mind I set up one of my SB-800's at the top of one of the wooden dowels that was also holding the backdrop with a simple clamp holding on to the foot that comes with the flash. I wanted the whole thing to have a stage look which meant that I would use some colored gels in front of the flashes. So the flash to her right was set up with a blue gel and aimed at the piano sound board. The third flash was shoot into a light umbrella to soften the light that would hit her face. I needed to be taller than I am (6'3") so I grabbed a kitchen chair and had my head up near the ceiling. I did this to keep the piano as the backdrop even though her head was above the top when she was sitting on it. The fun of this is there are four kids making noise and running around just off camera and this is just the old piano that works as a room divider, yet it looks like a studio shot. Creativity beats budget any day. To see the detail on her face http://norling.smugmug.com/gallery/4666856_tbgTP#277850248_ob7dE