Glamour: A Practice Shoot

We spent the afternoon in San Diego’s Pro-Am Studios practicing High Key Lighting. The idea is to flood a white backdrop with lights and illuminate the Model from left and right 45 degrees. The Camera is then adjusted for a slightly over exposed shot. This gives a washed out look which is, in some well executed images, quite flattering. We found coming into someone else’s Studio and adapting to their concept of lighting to be challenging. We like to be able to control all aspects of light right down to subtle minutia, including props, angles, poses.

We also like to have a High Definition Monitor hooked to the camera so that both the Model and the Photographer can immediately see the image and mutually adjust poses, lighting and camera settings. This makes the shoot a joint effort. It was a bit frustrating to have the Instructor start shooting and directing the Shoot – we paid for it after all (She is a super nice person, BTW). We were spending time to learn about High Key Shooting.

Our expectation was that the session would begin with concept pictures, how lights would be set up to achieve the concepts, followed by some time with our wonderful Model. Then, a review of the results, corrections and critique. After that we could refine our techniques and arrive at the expected results. Being and Engineer (Erik), he is very analytical about all aspects of Light and The Art of Photography. That is why we love and hate these sessions. The Studio Owners set up the Lighting and let folks snap away, however for seasoned Photographers, perhaps this is not really optimal. Our Visions clashed many times. We still did manage to get some great images if Dinah and would love to work with her again in some other setting.

Thanks for the kind visit to our humble blog. Kathleen and Erik