324 Headshots in One Day – Six Light Studio Setup
I had the assignment to photograph nearly two hundred high school students who will be Cappies reviewers this year. Basically high school students reviewing high school plays in the Journal.
I wanted to make this task more exciting so I tried to light it as good as possible and get a three dimentional look so I used six lights. Diagrams below. As you can see, we really need to re-paint the grey wall in the Journal studio!
I made this mosiac using the free program MacOSaix.
Here is my lighting setup. The two keys to a three dimensional look are to have lights behind the subject to give separation from the background and to have a spot light with a grid on it spray the background. The background lights keep the image from looking too flat. Front lights – White Lighting 1600 @ 1/8 power in a softbox, White Lighting 1600 @ 1/16 power into a 22″ beauty dish, Alien Bees ABR800 at 1/8 power into a 48″ umbrella. Back lights – Two Canon 550EX’s @ 1/2 power into 8×36″ strip boxes and a 550EX @ 1/128 power into a Honl grid on the background. Even with all the lights turned down low I could get f13 @ ISO200. More then enough.
