Studio: White Backdrop

I've been in the studio twice now. The first time I went in blind, took me about 10 minutes to figure out I was measuring the light incorrectly. But I got to know my classmate Karla a bit and we agreed to meet again the following Tuesday ... which was this week.

Initially, we went in thinking we would do still life again but we had a third companion this time --- his name is Antonio --- and between the three of us, portrait (retrato) shots seemed like more fun.

A few things of note:

When you want to use a white back drop (fondo blanco) be sure that the light measurement (medicion de luz) is the same both where the subject will be located and also against the backdrop. This will make the white appear overexposed (sobreexpuesta), which doesn't matter because white is white is white. Better to have an overexposed white ... which looks white, then an underexposed (subexpuesta) white which will look gray.

For our session we placed two lights facing the backdrop, one on either side facing the center. To light our subject we used a third light, which we covered with a "window" --- this is like a screen that is square shaped and goes over the bulb. Perhaps I should take pictures of the equipment so you know what I´m talking about. We then moved this third light back and forth and from side to side depending on what we had the subject do and we used various reflectors to fill in the shadows. (Side note: Miriam, in case you read this, thanks for the reflector you gave me ... I´ve been using it tons!)

Another very important note which I will go into more in another blog ... if you are going to retouch your photos in photoshop always, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, shoot in RAW mode. I have taken a vow to never shoot in JPEG again. Why, oh why, did I not take a digital photo class before???

Here are some pictures from this weeks session:

Stay tuned for next weeks session. ; P