Of Strobes and Natural Light

I got a message from a good model of mine a couple of days ago saying that she wanted to do a "comeback" shoot. We've been talking about it for quite sometime but our schedules never really allowed us to set up a session until last week. As it was impromptu, she said she was just going to bring whatever she has in her closet. It was almost  3 PM when she got to my studio. It was a good thing that she knew how to do her own make up which made it easier for us to set up everything on that day. 

While she was doing her make up, I went over the outfits she had brought and came up with three different looks with three different lighting setups. As the sun was still very high in the sky, I wanted our first look with natural light. Since my studio doesn't have lots of big windows to accommodate natural light I was left with a challenge to work on such limited background. However, we were able to capture some nice back light and natural flare:

Here's the lighting diagram for our natural light look:

When the sun was finally low and we weren't able to get some good natural highlights, we decided to move on to the second look that we had planned. For this one, Jabee wanted a sexy yet grungy style. She kept the top she wore on our first setup but changed her underwear to black and donned a red bandana for that 'gangsta' style. 

For this setup, I decided to go with my DIY gridspot. A gridspot (or grid) is a studio accessory that you can attach to your flash. When the flash fires through the grid, the spread of the light rays is limited. The effect you get is very similar to the effect achieved by a snoot, but light more controlled and really hits a small surface. This modifier gave me the contrast I needed for the sexy-grungy look that we wanted:

Because the gridspot produces hard light, I placed a reflector at the bottom in a clamshell-like setup in order to soften the hard shadows that it was creating. Here is the lighting diagram for this look:

For the final look of the night, Jabee wanted to do something simple and sexy. And what's sexier and simpler than a black outfit. Here's out final look for this session:

I went with my usual portrait lighting setup for this look which is a clamshell lighting setup and finished off with a vintage treatment using Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. Here's the lighting diagram for this look:

It was already 8 PM when we were able to finish the third look for this session however we still had a fourth and final look but I'll save that for another time and another entry. For more photos of Jabee, you can checkout her portfolio in my Facebook page. You can also follow us in Instagram @iamgirome and @jadylove1990.

If you have questions or comments, please don't hesitate to leave them at the comments section below.