Hello everybody!
Today we will be dissecting lighting for wedding dress catalogs Part2.
I would like to mention few things. This is a common lighting scheme for catalog shoots, especially when you have lots and lots of dresses. I used to do much more elaborate set-ups with lots of props and different lighting scenarios however when you have 170 dresses to shoot or 200 t –shirts and a very impatient client who’s mood gets darker with every passing day then you have to be on your toes. Ok, it is piece of cake, you might say? Well what about those 3 different themes you were talking about?
Please read on.
This particular client and actually all of them want a wide variety with no extra money for props, and realistically forget about the concept. In the past, I used to create the whole concept with real grass and leaves on the set, including fresh flowers and butterflies. I literally created a garden in my studio that had to be watered every day. I painted the walls, bought old furniture and painted them in different colors. I used to buy fruits and e.t.c. This is great and perfect exercise for creativity. The only problem is that it takes long time it’s pricey and you will need to hire assistants.
Here we have:
A tight schedule, no money what so ever for concept, and you must have fast turnaround. Sometimes the clothing lines (collections) are separated into two shoots. What that means is that half of the collection is in North America and the other half is in Europe and hasn’t arrived yet. This particular company had decided to shoot the first half now and the other half in a few months. Imagine if you set-up your garden full of flowers and maybe you have an elf hopping around on set? Great! But the client needs the same look when the other half of the collection arrives. You call your elf and he tells you that he is retired and no longer interested. What I’m trying to say is that you create a lot of unnecessary overhead for yourself and elevate the costs for your client. Don’t do that! You have to know in advance what your client wants, and sometimes you must convince them to listen to very simple logic about production costs.
So how do we make 3 different looks? This is what I came up with.
It is very cheap, VERY fast and effective.
I’m talking about projecting images onto a white paper background. There are special systems (digital backgrounds) that are designed just for this purpose and cost over 12K. They are much more effective, but in our case all we have is a Epson projector connected to my laptop with different images specifically prepared for this type of shoot.
You can use the diagram in the first part, however there has to be a few adjustments:
1. The umbrella has to be replaced with either full size softbox or in my case 2 sb900s attached to the light stand and beaming through 72″ x 4′ lightform panel. Place your flashes 10-15″ apart. Dial the bottom flash 1/4 of the stop less so that the brightest light will be on models face.
2. Move the reflector close to the model. (as close as you can)
3. Place projector on the opposite side of the softbox.
4. Important!!! Do whatever it takes to reduce the spill of light from the softbox.
The main problem with the spill is that it contaminates the light coming from projection thus rendering the background image very pale and reduces the contrast.
Expose for the background!!!! And adjust your main light accordingly.
Problems you will encounter:
1. The background image has very sharp edge which is not pleasant.
Solution: Place your projection on the floor and let the image gradually fall on the background paper. You can also make sure that the background paper gradually falls on the floor and not positioned at a 90 degree angle.
2. Washed out background
Solution:Make sure light from the main source doesn’t spill. Use large softbox with grids if possible. Also don’t forget the brighter the projector the better. You have more flexibilty to control the light.
3. The background images always turn out blue, although the main subject has proper color.
Solution: Don’t forget that the light temperature of your projector and your strobe or flash is different. Use gels on your light or projector. Change the tone of your image into sepia or black and white to create consistent look.
And yes you have to use high ISO 640 or 800 at f5.6 for this method to work. Don’t forget, you are exposing for the background!!
Again, this is bullet proof technique.
I’ll start rating all the lighting set-ups with degrees of difficulty on a 1-5 scale, 5 being the most difficult.
This one is rated at 3.5 out of 5.
OK sorry for the poor quality of images. These are actually poor scans from prints. I’ll try to get the originals in the near future.
As you can see all of the images (except the blue dress) were created with 2 sb 900 and simple projector set-up. Honestly, I could do 150 dresses in one day and as many themes as possible. The drawback is that you can only use this system several times; eventually you’ll have to think of something else.
Let me know if you run into troubles.
Goodluck!
