My 1st Maternity Shoot

AprilRamone · Jan 17, 2006

I did my first maternity shoot and overall I am pretty pleased since it was my first one and all. I wanted to have pretty dramatic lighting for it and I think I accomplished it. I am just using regular hardware store type of lightbulbs for lighting right now and I'm having a hard time with it. Seems like there is always a really bright spot on the person (Shown on the last one-which I didn't touch up) even though I tried to diffuse the light somewhat with wax paper. Do you think that if I invested in a lightbox, this problem would go away?
Any other tips or advice about these I would greatly appreciate!

Holly · Jan 17, 2006

I think you did great for your first shoot... For some of these I would add some contrast.. Just a tad to center the focus where you want it... For example in photo five.. If you added contrast it would take the focus straight to the belly..

I also played with your last one.. If you use the clone brush you can remove teh light spot on his head

If you would like to show you these I can fix them and add them up here to give you an example..

Anyway- Either way they turned out really nice.. I agree with the lighting.. I hate using regular lighting and will some day be able to get some NICE lighting for portraits.. BUT until now its what I have

JonK · Jan 17, 2006

My overall fave is the fourth one...i'm sure they're lovin these.

Peanuts · Jan 17, 2006

My favourite of these is also #4, even though it took me a few times going through this set to see how special it really was. You did a wonderful job on these, and they will indeed be very pleased.

AprilRamone · Jan 17, 2006

Holly said:
I think you did great for your first shoot... For some of these I would add some contrast.. Just a tad to center the focus where you want it... For example in photo five.. If you added contrast it would take the focus straight to the belly..

I also played with your last one.. If you use the clone brush you can remove teh light spot on his head If you would like to show you these I can fix them and add them up here to give you an example..

Anyway- Either way they turned out really nice.. I agree with the lighting.. I hate using regular lighting and will some day be able to get some NICE lighting for portraits.. BUT until now its what I have

Thanks for the response Holly. I did try adding more contrast to that #5, but then the belly got really washed out

I only added that last one to show how he pretty much looked in almost all of them before I used the clone tool. I was hoping to get some info on how to get the lights to NOT do that in the 1st place so that I don't have to go in and do that with all of my photos. I'm of the mindset that it's best to try to get problems solved when you're taking the shot rather than fix them in PS later.

AprilRamone · Jan 17, 2006

JonK said:
i'm sure they're lovin these.

haha..I haven't sent them to them yet! I sure hope they do though. I agree with both you and peanuts. #4 is the one my eye wants to look at the longest.

Christie Photo · Jan 18, 2006

AprilRamone said:
Do you think that if I invested in a lightbox, this problem would go away?
Any other tips or advice about these I would greatly appreciate!

Have you tried bouncing the light off a large white panel? You'd need something faily large... like a 4x8 sheet of fomcore. What you wanna try to do is make your small light source into a large light source.

Have fun!

Pete

markc · Jan 18, 2006

You can place one or more lights behind a translucent white shower curtain to make your own giant softbox. It can be a wall of light or whatever size you want, depending on how you hang it. You can use another or some foam core as a reflector on the other side.