The ONE-LIGHT PORTRAIT Challenge

[Mully]

 

[Mully]

^^^^^^ Don't know why I have 2 copies

 

[kundalini]

View attachment 33755

Care to elaborate on your setup? That was part of the homework assignment. Did your dog get to it first?

 

[Vtec44]

 

[ralphh]

I very rarely use lights - I'm more of a natural light person (yes I know round here that's often shorthand for noob lol).

Ended up selling the studio lights recently as I just never use them, plus the only room I had that was empty enough is now baby bedroom

This was one large softbox camera right

I quite like it, but not 100% happy - there's almost zero catchlights in her eyes for a start...

 

[jowensphoto]

New to OCF, so I was pretty OK with this shot:


Bare speedlight at the little boy's 2 o'clock. Ambient light was large window behind me, about 45 degrees camera left.

 

[CA_]

 

[runnah]

I'll play. Natural light on both.

 

[DiskoJoe]

I did all three of these shots with natural light. I was sitting in front of a window with a white curtain around midday and the sun was beaming through and I overexposed the shot a bit to bleed out the design on the fabric. There is actually different colored squiggles on the fabric.


Joe triptych by DiskoJoe, on Flickr

 

[kundalini]

I did a similar shot a few years ago and was never really happy with it, so why not revisit? Still not head-over-heels with this attempt, but it is miles ahead from the other one.


D700 with Nikkor 50mm f/1.8
Metered with Sekonic L-358 Flash Meter
ISO - 250
Aperture - f/8
Shutterspeed - 1/250s

The Celestial Beam

​

The setup.....
One PCB White Lightning X1600 with a 10° honeycomb grid
One silver reflector to catch the back
One silver reflector for Hair light
One white reflector to bring up the chin shadow

​

The distances......
Camera to subject - 6 1/2'
Main light to subject 8'
Subject to background - 4'
Subject to body reflector - 2'
Subject to hair reflector - 3 1/2'
Subject to under reflector - 3'
The solo light stand was my X marks the spot, with the small dumbell on the floor. The knurled bit at the top of the stand was my focal point for my camera side eye.


Thanks for looking.

 

[Derrel]

I seldom use just one light...I usually like a hairlight and a background light. But here's a ONE-lighter that I did a while back.

This is a single Speedotron Brown Line M11 light unit fired through a Lastolite 40 inch Umbrella Box which I positioned to deliver some catchlighting in the eyes and a fairly broad shadow on the off side. There is 'some' hint of fill from a 4x6 foot white reflective LightForm P22 panel on a rolling stand, but the amount of fill-in is very minimal because the reflector is at least five feet away from the subject. The shadowed side of the face maintains nice dimensional clues which were lost when I moved the reflector closer,to approximately three feet off to the side. I didn't like the shots I made later, when the reflector was moved closer to three feet. The Canon "flash" white balance was used,and it's a good match for this umbrella and uncoated flashtube. This image is exactly As-Shot using baseline Auto RAW conversion in ACR with just USM and re-sizing for the web.In this shot,the umbrella is lighting the paper just a tiny bit; I shot this on the short axis of my garage,and didn't use a backlight: I wish I would have used a light to make the backdrop whiter,or shot with the backdrop farther away from the umbrella for at least a medium gray,or darker, backdrop color in the final image. Here's the URL for this umbrella [url]http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=254455&is=REG&addedTroughType=search[/URL]​

 

[LaFoto]

Working with lights (reflectors, whatever) is totally beyond me, so I can't really join in on the challenge (as in: going out to create a photo for this thread as opposed to finding one that meets the idea in the "big box"), but may I post this one here? It is fairly recent (taken on 29 December last year), and it has one light source only! Please!?

 

[Thayli]

This was taken about six months ago and became an instant favorite of mine. It was taken with my old Olympus E-20 that had incredibly bad low light performance, and I ended up dismantling the 120w floodlight from the side of house and shoving it in the poor girls face, literally just out of shot. Between the heat and the blinding light, its a wonder she ever posed for me again.

So anyway, a $10 security floodlight from home depot just to the slightly high left (shes looking directly at it) and thats it. No reflectors or anything else.

 

[Tee]

Elinchrom 53" Midi Octa, camera right. 200mm, f/8 at 1/200 sec, ISO 200




30 degree grid, camera left. 95mm, f/8, 1/200 sec, ISO 200

 

[Robin_Usagani]

Damn kundalini. Pretty ripped!