This is Melanie again, staring melancholically into a beauty dish. Love the expression on her face.

Facing a beautydish

This one is also from yesterday, with a white background (slightly lit by a striplight that was on the left) and a striplight to the right. The flow in her hair is from a windmachine, one of my favorite tools in the studio.

These days I only use my black and white paper backgrounds. Black can appear as fully black when using enough light on the model that doesn’t hit the paper. White can go from pure white to gray, like in this photo, which is nice and flexible. Many people don’t realize you don’t really need a gray background, and can just use white.

There’s a touch of vignetting added in Photoshop here (mostly on the top left), but a lot was already present in the original.

Years ago I ventured into the world of gobo’s; projecting through a metal plate to get some kind of shape projected. I only used it once or twice, but now I’ve discovered that it’s still great as a spotlight, instead of using a snoot.

Here’s a photo from a shoot tonight with just the gobo lens. Very hard light, but it works well with the shadow on the wall.

Single gobo light, used as a spotlight.