Some time back I had shot a poster of Playboy® Playmate Carrie Stevens which sold out within a week of publication. What I am going to talk about in this blog is a basic lighting setup to get almost the same look that you guys can get for yourself in a very small space, in fact you could shoot this look in your living room! And that is what I did here with Carrie Stevens for the poster. I shot the poster in my living room at my studio apartment in Los Angeles with the use of only three lights.
In this setup I have a Beauty dish on the boom stand and a silver reflector which will bounce light under the models face to fill in the shadow that will be cast by the beauty dish light, this will help give a much more even light on the models face. The light from the front Will drop off and not hit the background so it will stay dark which is what you want for this look so the color of the background can be black or gray. Now if you are a brightly lighted room this will not work so shoot later in the day or at night with the room lights off. This will make sure that the backdrop is as dark as you can get it because you want the blue light to help pop behind the models hair!
For my back light (Rim Light) I wanted to have a rock and roll look so we went with a blue gel over the light, in the poster we had an orange gel. The back lighting was going to give separation to the model’s wild hair and leather jacket! As you can see in this final images.
Now when working with a model to give you the looks it’s good if you can show them some images maybe from some magazines or you can just stand in the place where the model will be for the shot and do the pose yourself. So, they can see what pose’s you are looking for and as I was working with a seasoned professional all I had to do is inform Carrie of what I wanted and she got it right away. Sometimes you will find a model has a set of looks they can give you and you don’t have to do a lot of instruction other than complimenting them that they are in the right place at the right time and it will help keep the model to repeat there good moves and not all the bad moves in front of your camera
