just me
If Ake can do it, I can do it too … a selfportrait (although I generously admit Ake does look a whole lot better).
I usually don’t make self portraits but I wanted to test out a new lighting idea. There weren’t any volunteers around so I jumped in front of the lens myself.
The lighting isn’t quite there yet but I’m heading in the right direction. Who can reverse engineer this image?
Is it two flashes 30 deg either side of the camera with snoots to limit the light to the front of the face?
Judging by the reflections in your eyes, I’d say either two flashes or two softboxes (more likely given the lack of harsh shadows), on left and right of the camera.
I’ d suggest one strobe pointing at two mirrors at 45º. The reflections on your eyes are of different intensity, so one of the eyes catches a reflected source light thus of less intensity.
Just my thought.
It could be two sofboxes facing each other. That might give limited light to the side of the face and neck while also creating the two reflections in the eyes
Two softboxes, roughly 30-degrees off the camera axis on lightstands with the lower border about shoulder height when seated. Both softboxes with gobos keeping the light out of the lateral-most portions of the face. Lit well enough to overpower ambient, though if the room was long that may not have taken a lot. Shooting @ 17mm should have helped, too.
Softboxes tilted downwards slightly towards subject?
The softer reflection in the left eye (viewer’s right) is more probably due to the gobo being angled in slightly more than on the opposite side. You’ll note that the light edge is more medial on the left side of Bert’s face as well.
Probably processed in LR / ACR w/ a boost in clarity as well as selective coloration to get the ‘feel’.
I’d be interested to know if there was any recovery applied, or if blowouts were avoided with excellent lighting alone.
Looking @ the eyes a bit more, there may have been top & bottom gobos as well (look at the same-side reflections in the eyes to see angular dimming at the corners inconsistent with curvature of the eyes alone).
Incredible photo, sir. I’d like to think I’ll take A photo that nice once in my life. My compliments on an excellent site and a growing collection of invaluable information.
Very nice lighting. I think it works great on male subjects.
Not easy to reverse engineer it though. Maybe an umbrella slightly to one side, just a few degrees (the left side of ur face is slightly moe in shadow than the other side). A black card or reflector in front of the umbrella and being the camera, allowing only light coming from the left and right edges of the umbrella and also sucking the reflection of the front light. The dark edges also suggest the use of black reflectors on each side, very close to ur face.
In other word, u surrounded urself of black “reflectors”, left, right and front. That’s just a guess
Can’t wait to hear from you how you did it !
You guys are close. I’ll reveal the setup soon.
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