LOCATION TECHNIQUES : Experimenting with lighting

Here are some images from a shoot that I did in a low key studio with black curtains and two red-head lights.

This photograph was the first one that I took using these studio lights. Here just one light was in use positioned at the left of the subject (Ceri). When I took this photo I realized that my white balance wasn't right for the lighting conditions so it made my image look orange.

Here I moved the light round to the right of the subject, and altered my white balance to the Incandescent setting. This made the lighting look true to how I saw it in real life and didn't have an orange cast over the image. 

Here I kept the single light at the right side of the subject but I moved it round towards the back and captured the photograph with the light just creeping in from the right hand side to create this flare. A lot of people/photographers say flare ruins an image but I personally really like this look. It creates a hazy almost romantic effect and I like the colours it creates. The greens tone with the models teal top and the oranges create warmth in the image. 

For this set of images I moved the single light behind the subject and placed it quite far away. I then underexposed the image slightly to make the subject really dark but have the light just creeping past their face. This created 'lip lighting' which just highlights the subjects nose and lips, creating this gorgeous silhouette. 

Here I have used the same lighting setup used for the lip lighting images with a different model (Natalie). I thought it would be interesting to use Natalie for this technique because she has bright red hair and thought it would create a nice effect to just see a faint line of light around her nose and lips and a small amount of red creeping in from her hair being lit up.

Here I introduced another light to my lighting setup. I positioned the first light behind the subject and the second one in front of the subject towards the right. The second light was positioned quite far away from the subject when taking this image so the light was softer and not as bright. 

Here the lighting is the same as the image above except the second light has been moved closer towards the subject to make the light on the models face slightly more harsh and brighter. Even though you can clearly see the light behind the subject here, I really like this image and the lighting as it's bright and makes my model appear more in focus and I like how the colours are more warm.

For these images I moved the first light directly behind the subject and the second light directly in front of the subject but very slightly to the left. This gives the subject a halo effect around her head and illuminates her face but keeps the background and surroundings very dark because the room was dark and surrounded by black curtains. Because there was no light pointed at the dark curtains, the subject seems to glow in her surroundings.

Here I have a new model (Sam). These photographs were taken with a light directly behind the subject, and one directly in front but slightly to the right. I positioned myself towards the left of the subject to get this angle. Because of the darkness in the room and harshness of the lights, a really nice shadow has been created down the left side of my models face. The bottom two images also have flare in them which I really like.

Here I have removed one of the lights so I am left with one light again. I have positioned the light towards the right and behind the subject. It was positioned to it wasn't directly facing the subject but it almost skimmed the subjects face to create this lovely lighting and highlighting the cheek and nose.

Here I tried creating the classic silhouette image by lighting up the background. I used both lights pointed at the black curtains. Because the room was dark, the curtains would be the only thing that were visible and the subject blocking that light would create this silhouette effect. This wasn't as successful as I wanted it to be. I would like to revisit this technique and perfect my technique when creating the classic silhouette. This image isn't very clear that it's a silhouette of a person, I think because I couldn't get enough on the background just using two lights. If I had illuminated the background more I think the silhouette would appear clearer and more obvious that it was a person.