What am I doing wrong?

[rjwarren]

Casey

One thing hits me immediately -- she's WAY too close to the background. To put the right light in there you have to have the model at least, say 10 feet from the background. Then the shadows will be blown out by the background light.

The lights on the background need to be half way between her and the background, 45 degree angle toward the paper, and two stops over your main light.

The main light should be at the level of her face -- it really is the FACE that you're photographing. If it's a fashion shot, you can move it down to get the clothes.

Bob

Like this:

[LarryAB]

It's mostly exposure. I use white cloth and you can't see the wrinkles. Just spread it out best you can and if your lights are positioned right, it'll blow out just fine.

The problem with cloth will be the floor. You'll never get the wrinkles out from around her feet, at least not for very long. I have a couple white panels I got from Home Depot that work pretty well. Just lay them on the floor and tuck the fabric in under them. I get a reflection from the model, but I kinda like that.

However, paper is pretty cheap at about $36 per roll, and by all accounts it will last a long time if you take care of it. I only use the white fabric because I have it and it works well enough.

larry

[Andy_Pearlman]

If you have them, then yes, two softboxes on the background woould be perfect and solve all kinds of issues. Especially if the diffusion is recessed into the softbox, you'd have much less chance of flare hitting the camera, and less need for the black flags. Ideally though, when doing this full-length, you really need 4 heads because its really hard to get the same even light level across all that paper with two heads, unless you really back the heads off to a point where they'd be in front of the model, and that's not good. I do it with two heads on umbrellas for this client because frankly its quick and dirty, and I know 95% of what we shoot will be 3/4, and his web guy will take out floor shadows before you can say "boo".

The main light softboxes in my shot on the right, in green, were simply two 30x40 Chimeras positioned on either side of the camera postition, about 3' apart, and pointing directly toward the background (not angeled toward the model). The reason is you still get plenty of light on the model (half from each light) but you also have coverage if she moves out of the center. Also, they are not set so high that they point down, they are set so the middle of the box is about level with the girl's neck, maybe a bit lower. This helps keep shadows under the neck to a minimum. Sometimes we do two models in this setup, and if necessary, just move the softboxes farther apart. Ideally, I'd prefer to keep them close together (sometimes I have them so close the only space left is for the lens) and just pull them back toward the camera or behind it, to get the lens coverage of two or more models. The farther apart the lights are, the more you start to get those double, and far wide, catchlights in the eyes, making the whole thing look more like a senior portrait than a glamour shot.

Wish I knew how to use a drawing program to diagram this for you, but I hope this helps. Now that I think of it, I'm shooting for this client next week, I'll try to take a behind the scenes shot to illustrate. Stand by.

Regards,
Andy Pearlman
Andy Pearlman Studio

Well.....

Alot is dependent on how many lights you have....one of my favorite setups is blowing out the background.....two lights on each side set at about f22 on the white seamless paper.....and then a main light moved for different emphasis etc... I use the foam cores Andy spoke of to adjest the amount of bounce which can drastically change the image as seen below.....the back lights are set one above models head and one about her knees bouncing into silver umbrellas and then against the paper...move them back...less bounce more shadows...move them in front of the model and you get the wrap around seen below...

Wrap around...take ntoe of the models sides...




Closer to background



But the feet remain the same minus a few footprints removed in post....

Rick Shellhouse

uhmmm.... BLAST!!

Man.. you are blasting her to death..

Try placeing that light off to the side of her.. for one.. and "feather" the light on her...instead of hitting it directly on her.. the feet problem is because the "hot spot" of the soft box is too close to her..and the lighting isn't as bright by her feet as it is on her body.. Bring that big thing back a ways.. I was just yelling at a guy for lighting a model with one of those octagon banks...which stands some 7 feet round..which he was using as a main light..;. his "contrast" light was a big deep dish reflector which he blasted her with...and was asking me how it was that I was able to get the effect I was getting with a medium strip box as my main light...as you can see in the picture bellow.. Well, I wasn't using a gigantic light tent for one..

JP

[photoTexas]

Thank you and everyone who is posting for there input... I am glad to be apart of a great community like this... I will be reshooting in the morning and will post my results.. thanks guys..