4 Light studio set up (By Scott Lymath)

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With the weather taking a turn towards winter I felt it was about time to venture back indoors to the studio.

Working with Chai, we set about creating some head shots with a certain ‘Cleopatra’ twist largely inspired by the art deco head dress supplied by Glamragzz. My favourite edit from the shoot was the main image at the top of the post.

I felt this shot really hit the nail on the head with what we set out to do; a mysterious intensity provided by Chai coupled with some great wardrobe (Glamraggz) and subtle themed make up by Miriam King.

Camera settings: ISO 200, 1/125, f/16 (pretty standard studio settings).

4 lights were used for the set up:

The main shadow on Chai’s face should tell you a lot about the key light….

It’s relatively hard, classically butterfly in shape, and positioned directly under Chai’s nose….produced from a gridded beauty dish positioned centrally at about a 45º angle from above.

2 gridded strip boxes positioned equally to the left and right provide some shimmer to the fabric wrapped around Chai and a dash of light to her cheekbones.

A final small umbrella, dialled right down in power, was pointed upwards at an angle from the floor to produce some interesting catchlights on the bottom of the eyes.

A lighting diagram is shown below…note that the beauty dish and floor standing small umbrella are overlayed as they were both positioned centrally.