I learned to light after years of deconstructing the work of other photographers. And I know from your previous feedback that you guys are fond of these posts, so let’s dig into another one.
How did I make this picture?
Is it a lucky snapshot?
Is it lit?
If so, how?
The camera Settings?
The direction?
Post production?
Whatever details you think are needed to make this image.
Looking forward to you trying to pick this apart… I’ll reveal everything in a followup post. The person who gets the closest gets… …a chest bump and a pizza, or signed book or something. Don’t be shy. Let er rip.
Is it a snapshot? Yeah right.
Is it lit? I’ll say. There is a fairly hard and directional light to both right and left and both slightly behind the model. You probably had a black background but not necassarily as it would go to black anyhow if you kept the lights off it and had the lights’ output fairly high to completely nuke the ambient.
Camera settings? I’d say you were stopped down to at least f/11 to give some sharpness safety and at your highest sync speed to overcome the ambient. You were also prefocused on the spot the dancer would be in at the time of firing.
You told the dancer what move you were looking for and where you wanted her to be at that moment on the set.
I don’t think there is anything done in post apart from maybe removing any lighter colours in the background black. Maybe levels or curves to increase the contrast.
To me the contrast is a bit severe but that may just be my monitor. The highlights are blown out and the blacks of her shadows are as deep as the background.
I’m terrible with words, so I made a diagram: http://tinypic.com/r/11cb5vr/7
Well, first off, this isn’t just a lucky snapshot. Like some others, I think she is on your custom plexiglass rig that you’ve shown in older vids. Dancer roughly 4′ off the ground. Shot upward onto either a light blocking flag or possibly just night sky. I call the plexi because of the tip of her pointe shoe is black where other light is wrapping quite a bit. The lighting looks like strobe from either side of the model, possibly a gridded strip bank, elevated to the height of the model (the underside of her arm is not lit, so it has to be at least a tiny bit above her), and also feathered toward her back (because of the tiny shadow line that runs down her front leg, less pronouced in the back leg). Strobes maybe 8-10′ away on either side.
Settings should be something like f/11 (for good depth of field) 1/250 (sync speed and drops the ambient) ISO 200 (Nikon native). Model direction would have had her drop her pose to look at the camera, rather than most dancers that would have their face up and toward the audience. Post would have been minimal to clean up the background and make it 100% black. Also clean up any sensor dust that might start showing it’s face.
Sorry if I wrote a book. Cheers, Joel
light source to the left rear and parallel to her right. notice her right arm is mostly dark which means light source cannot come from parallel to her left. shutter speed has to be at least 1/500 sec, if not more. recall you said in one of your videos that there is a way to boost sync speed to 1/1000 sec with broncolor rig. Anyhow, 1/250 would be way too slow to freeze this action. can’t tell if the photo is cropped. uncropped, f/10, cropped, could be f/8. very cool photo.
Oh, and a 50mm f/1.8.