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.
I would normaly say speedlights, HSS… but knowing you it is the uber-schnell Profoto lights. Although the edge if the highlight to shadow transition area is kinda soft, I am still gonna say hard light from a sport-type or maybe Magnum reflector–possibly with a sock (diffuser) over each. One is low off to her left and the other higher (maybe head height) to her right.
The thing here is that EVERYTHING is tac sharp. I mean, both toes–really?!? I’m thinkin’ F8 to F11 minimum and a fast shutter speed–way faster than 1/250th. That or you pre-focused on her and then all the lights were turned off and you opened the shutter. She jumps and you pop the strobes for a 1/1000th to 1/1250th or so flash duration pop that froze her solid.
B&W conversion in PS as well as dropping the shadows and bumping up the highlights in curves.
I mean that, or you held up your iPhone at the balet and just snapped this one of 8).
I’m a complete beginner, but I like this puzzle.
Direction
This appears to be a leaping image as opposed to a static image from an interesting or unexpected angle. This puts a powerful and graceful athlete in the process of doing what she does best: dancing. This is my biggest assumption. If she is static, then the light and shadow will be easier to balance using modeling lights (and you don’t need to read everything else I wrote). If she was leaping, though, read on…
The full extension and strength of the pose means that the dancer probably had a few steps to get moving, so you needed some space for her to start and to land. In order to allow the dancer to leap freely, without feeling constrained or worrying about bumping into you, I’ll assume you had at least about 10 feet between you and the dancer.
Camera, Lens, and Lighting
To fill the frame with the subject at 10 feet, you’d need a lens with about a 28 degree field of view on a full-frame Nikon. That’s about 85mm. To get the front-to-back sharpness of the image, you’d want a depth of field of maybe 5 feet. That means about f/22 on an 85mm lens at 10 feet away. For a little more room, you could have shot a 135mm around 16 feet, or a 200mm at almost 25 feet away.
The optical character of the image, including the relative sizes of each foot and the stretch of the lead leg makes me think you were at the shorter end of the range (85mm rather than 200mm).
f/22 means strobes rather than hot lights. Lighting is camera left and right with a 1:1 ratio. Both lights seem to be aimed a little forward from behind the dancer. The relative evenness of the lighting from top to bottom makes me think large softboxes or strips on each side, maybe with grids to control spill.
To give room for her to leap, assume each light is at least 5 feet away. Shooting through modifiers, you might need 800+ watt seconds to get f/22, maybe 1200. To freeze motion, though, you need short duration. Broncolor Scoro packs would give a great mix of short duration and ample power.
Shot was pre-focused and focus locked.
Post Production
The background cleaned, the highlights and shadows adjusted through multiple curves adjustments. The conversion to b&w has a beautifully contrasty, silvery feel. To get that, I’m guessing that curves were applied independently to each color channel and those color channel curves were blended in “luminosity” mode.
Okay, now I’m going to read everyone else’s thoughts and see how close I am.
I think two lights, one to the right of the ballerina (from her perspective) and a littlebit in front of her. The other one o her left and a little bit behind her. Camera setup, not so sure, I think in this case, the strobe cuts the action, so the shutterspeed doesnt have to be really fast. Aperture not too wide, cause she’s well in focus everywhere. For post: black&white obviously, quite some contrast. I think you used a black screen for the background, so that didn’t need any post 🙂
Can’t think of much more :p looking forward to hear how it’s actually done 🙂
I think this is not a lucky shot but posed. The background is clear and no other lights such as stage spots….
Black background, or something less than white which has been underexposed enough to get it very dark. Light sources of equal size left and right of dancer, same height as her and a little behind her, just enough to add a rim (am looking at the shadow at her rib cage for this).
A little pp to get the blacks – but I am going with very little pp and reckon this was done right when pressing the shutter.
Camera settings…May be gazing at tea leaves in terms of accurracy but the focus from front to rear feet is good so I am going with a telephoto (well longer than 70mm 🙂 ) at f8 plus. No idea on shutter sped since flash duration would freeze the jump.
Or do I take up flower arranging? 🙂
Beautiful, elegant, and yet powerful. Well done.