Help dissecting lighting to replicate

CDAPhoto · Oct 13, 2018

I hope I’ve posted this in the correct section if the forum, if not please let me know.

I have an opportunity to photography a high school vollyball team for individual portraits, and if the school likes my work I’ll be asked to come back and photograph the other sports they offer.

I’ve been looking around on google for ideas to keep it creative and I’ve found some that I think I am going to pursue.

The concept I’m going for:
Google Image Result for http://allisonragsdalephotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/DSC8532.jpg

The schools gymnasium is a very warm color with a temp probably around 3200°K tungsten halogen which is what I think they light the gym with, very glossy wooden floors, overall it’s a pretty poorly lit gym, which will make it rather simple for my Strobe to overpower the rest of the ambient lighting in the room..

my questions are:

is do I just need to keep a decently high aperture (5.6 to 9)and my shutter at 250 to replicate this lighting?

Or will using HSS make any difference when it comes to how much ambient light reaches the sensor?

Is the lighting equipment used here likely to be only the key light or do I need a fill also?

Will a parabolic 90cm softbox be sufficient or do I need to use a strip w/ grid?

Is this lighting coming from camera height or higher?

It’s my first time shooting in a gymnasium, I normally work outside so I’m trying my hardest to research the answers myself but Monday is coming up fast.

Thanks

Derrel · Oct 13, 2018

The light in this shot was not placed very high. The light was camera-right, which is less-preferred by most people than camera-left (just as an aside). As you can see, the eye camera-left has no substantial catchlight in it, since the main light was placed camera right, and kind of not very far forward in relation to the front plane of her face. This shot was lighted by a "relatively" small light source, hence the crisp, deep shadows. She is bright, and the background is dark; this helps keep the backdrop unobtrusive. Look at the shadow of her nose and chin: she is seated on the floor; the main light is _not_ all that high up, perhaps only 6 to 8 feet high. This type of lighting looks good on small photos (like yearbook shots, which are often published as small as a playing card) since the face is shown with shape revealed through shadowing.

Using a lowish ISO setting, and a smallish f/stop like f/8 to f/11, with the flash close to the subject, and a fast shutter speed such as 1/200 or 1/250, will keep the background dark and unobtrusive; slowing the shutter way down would have the opposite effect.

OKAY: The way the Inverse Square Law works is this: With the flash CLOSE to the person, and far from the background, when you expose for the person, the background lighting drops off VERY rapidly.

Yes, high-speed flash synch could also be used, to make the backdrop very dark, but the foreground, and flash-lighted person would be bright.

You could use a 90cm softbox or octabox or whatever, and light and get this type of look, which is of a crisp type of lighting, with well-definded nose and under-chin shadowing; this type of lighting reveals shape and texture, and is the opposite of the big,flat,dull,boring, wide-swath-of-soft-directionless-lighting that's so popular these days with massive 60- to 72-inch modifiers.