Fashion Photography Tutorials – Little Gems 2

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Thanks Bruce once again for this little gem, with this second collection of fashion photography tips to help you shoot some really great fashion photography pics.

“Shooting with ring flash for a fashion magazine editorial for Arabella with a Step by Step guide for post production on the image.

Although a very simple lighting set up, ring flash can be fantastic or a complete disaster if your not careful. I will describe the steps I went through to achieve the fashion image bellow.

As explained, shooting with ring flash is very simple but there are a couple of words of advice to avoid your resulting images being a total disaster.

First I will describe what a ring flash is for those that are not aware.

Originally the ring flash was developed in 1952 by Lester A Dine, as a dental/medical photographers accessory.

As its name suggests it is basically a flash that has been manufactured to fit around the front of a lens, allowing for flash lighting of macro photography, these days they come in 3 main sizes, quite small as per the traditional ring flash for shooting dental/surgical procedures designed to allow the photographer to work within an operating theater environment with out using cumbersome traditional on camera flash or off camera flash kit, which takes up space as well as can get in the way of operating theater procedures, as well as giving the photographer the ability to shoot operation procedures close up.

The ring flash used for the images to the upper left was specifically designed to use for portrait/fashion photography.

These used to come in 2 main sizes, c9in ring flash from companies like Broncolor or Profoto or 12in ring flash from Bowens or Elinchrom, due to the popularity of the 9in version being more portable and designed so you can shoot hand held with the ring flash attached to your cameras tripod screw plus the range of modifiers and accessories being available.

The larger ring flash seems to have stopped being manufactured.

The image was shot with the Nikon D100 with an18 to 35mm lf2.8 lens, fl was at 27mm exposure was f11 at 125 sec, at 200asa (iso) Power of ring flash set to give a reading of f11 with flash to subject distance at approx 10ft.

The story line for the editorial was glitzy celebrities out to play, so I chose to give the images a paparazzi press shot look by shooting the whole fashion story with a ring flash, it gives a hard, bright shadowless illumination on your subject and if your shoot close to a back ground, a shadow all around your subject. see the image to the right. You can use a diffuser, a honey come grid or leave the flash with no modifier to give a really hard light. I chose to tape some 1.5 stop scrim diffuser over the flash to soften just a little to keep the press feel to the lighting.. See other images from the editorial lower down on the right.

The ring flash that I used has no censor, so once you have taken the flash reading you must keep your flash/camera to subject distance the same for every shot or adjust your settings/power output accordingly if you do, if you move closer, you will over expose, further away and you under expose. Also its always best to keep the ring flash parallel to your subject, as well as at mid height to your model. IE too low and working close, as I often am, gives fast fall off so your model will not be evenly lit from head to toe. I usually stay at mid height level to my model. You will notice that the lighting, if you get it right, appears to be soft and can hide a multitude of sins, i,e wrinkles etc. I still brief my make up artist that I will be using harsh light and to make sure make up is very matted, unless I’m after a shimmery look.

Like any lighting set up your not familiar with, its always best to experiment before you shoot to make sure your results are as you wish them to be”…

Article Author: www.BruceSmithPhotographer.com

Complete Article Source: Fashion Photography Tutorial

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