Lighting set-up #1 Cross lighting

 This is one of my favorite lighting setups and it's really pretty easy to do.As you can see from the diagram bellow, its a three light setup. My key light was a 250w hot light through a white umbrella, placed with the light just above head height and aimed down slightly so that the central pole pointed to the models nose. This gives a nice soft wrap of light with those great catch lights in the eyes.




Next I set up two SB28 flash guns behind the model also about head height. one was pointing at the back of the models head and the other pointing at the white backdrop. These where fitted with tungsten gels to match up the colour with the hot light. I tend to start off with the flashs set to 1/8th power and from there you can push them up or down to get different effects. For this shot however , I seem to remember that I left them at 1/8th.

To give you a better idea of placement and scale - the flash guns where about 5ft from the backdrop and the model was stood about 7ft from the backdrop.

I took an incident meter reading from the models face with the lumisphere pointed at the key light and came out with - ISO 200  /  160th sec   /  f4.

You should probably also bear in mind that I did a fair amount of post on this shot to really lighten and soften all the tones to give it that super light ethereal feel. Here's a copy of the origional image strait out of the camera and yes, thats a real butterfly, albeit alittle on the dead side... Tweet