Photo from: Basic Studio Lighting Seminar March 2007 participant

I just love this color scheme, pink and blue. Make-up compliments the whole image, the blue eye shadow nicely contrast with the pink wig and clothes. The model’s expression is just perfect. Now for the bad part, there is too much light coming from the top lighting the wig, since the wig is very light colored it will easily overexpose compared to skin or real hair. This just shows how blind a light (flash) meter can be, it can’t tell what the subject is. If you were shooting with a Digital camera, turning on the blinking highlights should already warn you that the hair is being over exposed, and details of the wig are being washed out.

Photo from: Basic Studio Lighting Seminar December 2006 participant

Who said a portrait has to always be vertical, in this case the horizontal orientation together with the rule of thirds works nicely. A few things that bothered me though, first, since the model is looking to her left, it might have conveyed a better story if she was at the left side of the photo looking at the empty area on the right. Secondly, I have a pet peeve for stray hair, and if I was the one shooting this particular photo I would have most likely called on the hair stylist to do something about the stray hair below the model’s right ear. I know Photoshop can fix this, but I still prefer fixing something I can during the shoot itself. Like the eye bags in this case, adding a fill light from slightly under her face would have lightened it up a bit, maybe to a point that it wouldn’t have been that obvious.

Basic studio lighting seminar: When: June 22 Friday (5:30pm to 9:30pm), June 23 Saturday (scheduled shoot) and Critique session on June 25 Monday (5:30 pm to 7:30 pm)
Where: Unit 602 Cityland 10 Tower 2, H.V. Dela Costa St. Salcedo Village, Makati City, behind RCBC Tower near Shell Gas Station.

Maximum of 10 Participants
Topics:
1. Types of commonly used studio lights
2. Light modifiers
3. Trigerring lights
4. Measuring light
5. Light positions
6. Types of portrait lighting
7. Dealing with models

1st day of seminar will be on discussion of the topics, there will be no shooting to be done. Though there will be a hands-on practice in measuring lights using a flash meter.

2nd day, scheduled shoots for the group (9am, 1pm and 4pm), models will be provided. Participants should only come on their time slot, to avoid over crowding. During the shoot, each participant will be asked to conceptualize a lighting set-up to be done with their model, other participants on the same group will be assisting. After the participant finishes the shoot, other participant on the group will do the same, so the previous participant will now be acting as the assistant. (round robin system)

For the Critique session which will allow fellow students and me to critique ones work, as they say getting better needs one to realize its faults as to make sure to correct it the next possible time.

Kindly bring 1 to 2 of your favorite photo from the photo session printed on 5R, ink jet prints on photo paper are acceptable. All photos will be posted together on the wall for viewing. I usually also discuss some questions regarding post processing during these critique sessions.This guarantees a hands-on set-up, thus learning from actually doing it rather than just listening. This will also make sure that the participant will the only one shooting at the time of his/her set-up, so he/she gets all the needed angles to complete the shoot, no more wrestling for a spot just to get the photo.Seminar Price is P. 2,500.00 - inclusive of handouts.

If you want to sign-up kindly send me the following info:
Name:
Email:
Cel. No.:
Preferred time slot for Saturday (9am, 1pm or 4pm):
Which Seminar:

seminars@photosbykengo.com

Sample work of the past participants:
http://gallery.photosbykengo.com/seminar/

Photo from: Basic Studio Lighting Seminar December 2006 participant

Nice use of ratio (8:1), shadows are still very prominent but still showing enough detail on the models face. I would probably just add another light shining from the back of the model aimed towards the head to add a better seperation bewtween the dark background and the left part of the model’s face. Though one thing to consider this type of harsh side lighting doesn’t work on all models, skin smoothness is a big consideration, because this type of lighting position tends to exagerate texture.