For my last shoot of the semester break, I only ended up shooting the two rolls of black and white film I brought – Kodak Tri-X Pan 320, and Ilford Delta 3200. The roll of Kodak Portra 400, the best color negative film in existence for portraiture as far as I am concerned, I had with me will have to wait for another time. Having never shot with this particular girl before I was unsure how things would go, but it was evident from the start that if nothing else we would at least have a good time. When I took my film out of the tanks and held the negatives up to the light, I knew I had some winners.

I thought bookshelves with beer bottles on them would serve nicely as a beer-related backdrop, and happen to have entirely too many bottles of beer on hand. For a little added personality, why not add a goblet and swirl it to add a dash of motion to the equation? I couldn’t think of a reason not to do that either, so we did.

Shooting inside on a nasty day means controlling the light myself. Starting point? No ambient at all. Final state? Slightly warm light on the bookshelf, clean and soft light on the subject. See below.

This is my starting point: ISO 200, f/8, 1/125s. That would leave me with enough shutter to freeze motion, and kill any ambient light. Stopping down to f/8 would make sure the window of acceptably sharp focus would tend to include my entire subject. If you pay attention to my other photos, which are generally outside using my friend the sun as a light source, I usually shoot around two stops wider (if not more).

No light. Black frame.

Now, a black frame isn’t much to look at unless you’re Spinal Tap and you’re trying to find the most blackest – something that can be none more black – black for an album cover. I usually start with the background, and work my way forward. That’s exactly what I did this time. A gridded 285HV with a 1/4 CTO gel in it nicely covered the bookshelf. Click the image to see where the actual light was placed, I added the setup shots as comments to the photos on Flickr.

Background lit.

Time to bring in the subject. One 285HV, snooted, into the wall to the camera-right of the subject to fill in the wall and bounce back a bit of side light brought in some more depth. The key light was my third 285HV bounced into a large Lastolite Tri-Grip reflector. It just so happens that my tripod doubles as pretty good reflector holder.

All lit up

The whole scene.

Lighting Setup

Finally, one of the photos with the goblet involved.

Jennifer Litz

The short and skinny is simple. Get two light stands, and two shoot through umbrellas. Raise one of the umbrellas up high and angle it down towards your subjects. Make the bottom of that umbrellas a few inches above where the top of your lens will be. Take your bottom umbrella and put it under the top umbrella, leaving maybe a foot or two of free space, and angle it up some. To do this you’ll need to have the legs on one stand flat and wide, and the other raised up and narrow. Weighing down the top stand is wise if there’s going to be any potential for wind, or people moving about the area. Set your exposure as you normally would, leaving both lights at the same power will give you what almost looks like a giant light bank. You can mess with lighting ratios a bit for a more three dimensional effect, I usually just shoot both strobes at the same power.

The setup looks something like this:

Stack your umbrellas

The result looks a little like this:

Clamshell Lighting Result