For this dramatic lighting shoot I used a large 1000k tungsten light to give me that moody look I was going for. I put a gobo (A gobo is a stencil or template that is placed in front of a light source to control the shape of the emitted light.) in front of the light to give me the shadows to work with. I had a 650K tungsten light that was behind a large scrim to work as a fill light it was setup behind the 1000k. My exposure was set for the brighter 1000K. ISO 800 with 4.5 F stop at 100sec, the lens was at 45mm on a Tamron 28-70mm zoom with Canon 60D APS-C size CMOS sensor camera.
I use a black cloth backdrop and instructed the model not to walk too far away from the backdrop so that the shadows I made with her & the gobo would fall off onto the backdrop. My model for this shoot was from Norway, Mariel Gomsrud who I thought had a fabulous looking face with a strong jawline plus Mariel’s short blonde hair made for a smashing look. I think this all helped to make for a different shoot for me as when you shoot for a lot of catalogs you can’t go outside of the plan white backdrop and use hard shadows you have to light all the outfits in some sort of flat light to show off the clothes. Those catalog clients are not looking for mood or editorial images. I think this setup helps create an interesting image with the use of light.
