Fashion Photography: DIY Light Saver

Adapting the look of LED or Fluorescent tube backgrounds for still photography with a DIY approach using softboxes, a v-flat, a knife and three Profoto lights.

 

So I’m on Instagram one day, minding my own business, and I come across this great post by Star Wars actor John Boyega of a brilliant series of photos by Jason Bell for British Vogue. It appeared that the series was shot with Kino Flos or LED tube lights, an apparent wink to light sabers. I liked the concept, but I felt it could be better with flash because it would create contrasty directional light, more details would be resolved at f11 and I could use a shorter more angular main light that would bring out the models features. So I tried to come up with a DIY plan to get the general effect with what I have in my garbage can full of modifiers, and what I could buy at Home Depot or art store.

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Some of the dream team @britishvogue ? @jasonbellphoto

A post shared by John Boyega (@johnboyega) on

[dt_gap height=”10″ /] If you break down the lighting in the simplest terms possible, you realize that the set up is just a series of backlights and sometimes one single light near their faces. The horizontal strips create both up-lighting and down-lighting, lens flare and if the model is not too tall, a hair light. However they are omni directional and extremely soft, so they don’t create much contrast. Using these tubes as backgrounds is nothing new and has become common place as LED lights by companies like Quasar Science have proliferated. This style of lighting is something I have wanted to incorporate in my own work for sometime. You’ll often see them in music videos, fashion photos and all kinds of shots.   [dt_gap height=”10″ /]

[dt_gap height=”10″ /] gobo behind the scenes photography I have shot hard light through different gobos (go-betweens), casting various patterns on subjects and walls and I have also photographed a person in front of a black flag in front of a larger octabox (using the flag as my background), essentially turning the box into four edge lights, then I added a separate main light up front. So it seemed only logical to combine ideas. Adapting this concept to flash will allow you to shoot at much lower ISOs and or use higher s-stops. And of course most photographers have large softboxes but they don’t own a bunch of video lights. Basically, I planned on cutting lines into two large black surfaces and putting them in a 90-degree formation in front two softboxes and then having the subjects stand in front of that black surface, with extra light sometimes coming from a separate strip softbox. [dt_gap height=”10″ /] I’ll apologize in advance, you’re about to see a lot of references to inches because unlike the rest of the civilized world, we still use the imperial system to measure things, which is odd, because if our President measured his hands in centimeters they might sound bigger, better yet millimeters. We’ll wait for the next tweet. [dt_gap height=”10″ /]

[dt_gap height=”10″ /] Back to our story, first I bought two 40″ x 60″ 3/16-inch thick pieces of black from core from a local art store. Once I had it in the back of my truck, I decided to take it back and buy two 48″ x 96″ 3/16-inch thick pieces, because originally I was being cheap and trying to save $15.     [dt_gap height=”10″ /]   Chicago behind the scenes photography DIY background fashion models profoto [dt_gap height=”10″ /] DIY Photography studio lighting [dt_gap height=”10″ /] Next, I looked up the diameter of a Kino Flo tube and discovered that they are roughly 1.5 inches in diameter, so that would be the width of my slats. Generally I wanted my top slat to be a little more than 72 inches off the ground which is more or less equal to average male model height, so that they would have a hair light from the top slat, and I figured that I wouldn’t be photographing anything two feet or fewer from the ground, so basically I decided that I would have five slats evenly spaced out over 48 inches. [dt_gap height=”10″ /] Luckily for me, I already had a metal T-square that had a 24 inch long side that was 1.5 inches thick. So I traced that onto my foam core, extended the lines to 36 inches, and then cut it out with a knife that holds a razor blade, sometimes called a hobby knife, box cutter or a utility knife.  After I had the first panel cut, I traced it onto the second panel and cut it out too. Then I joined the two panels together side by side using black gaffer tape and finally I placed thepannels in front of two Large Chimera softboxes at around a 90 degree angle. [dt_gap height=”10″ /] If you hinge two large panels of foam core with tape, they can then stand alone vertically if you align them in a V formation or really any angle, this is commonly referred to as a v-flat. [dt_gap height=”10″ /] In order to shoot it af f11, I needed to pump 1200 watts seconds into each of the large soft boxes with  my Profoto 2400ws pro pack and about 125 watt seconds from a Profoto D1 monolight into the strip box. [dt_gap height=”10″ /]

[dt_gap height=”10″ /] I thought my Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II would fog/flare really nicely, but then I found that my Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II made better haze and then once I was done with the series and screwing around, I realized that the Canon EF 50mm f/1.2 might’ve been the best lens! Oh well better luck next time.   [dt_gap height=”10″ /]

[dt_gap height=”10″ /] Once I had the images in Photoshop, I used the straight lasso tool to select a little more than my white lines so I could clean up the imprefect cuts with a white paint brush and I also removed the tape from the shots too. [dt_gap height=”10″ /]

Agent 006 @martydoesmodeling. Styling by @proberto331. Lit with 1.21 gigawatts ⚡️of Profoto light in two big ass @chimeralighting softboxes, which was shot through a black #vflat with some holes in it, which were cut carelessly by a very clumsy photographer with a dull XACTO knife, who is now blind. #chimeralighting #profoto #latinmodel #dasmodels #softbox #makeportraits #portraitmood #portraitphotography #dasmodelschicago #johngressmedia #dasmodelsmiami #profotoglobal #latinomodels #pursuitofportraits #photostudio #fstoppers #tallaf #strobist #portrait_mf #kdpeoplegallery #johngressmedia #portraitfestival #portraits_vision #chicagophotographer #portraitfeed #chicagomodel #endlessfaces #chicagomodels #tuxedo #profotousa Assisting by @loopyadorno A post shared by John Gress (@johngressmedia) on

[dt_gap height=”10″ /] stressfractureIMG_7985 Now, where did I go wrong? I decided that it might be nice to sometimes show the 90-degree corner, so I cut my slats all the way to the edge on one side. Overtime, my whole panel began to bend, the gaffer tape I had binding the panels started to peel and the stress lines developed. If I could do it all over again, I might have selected a thicker stock of foamcore and / or left at least one inch on the interior edge. I also would have felt more comfortable curring the slats at closer to 40 inches if I had that extra inch on the the inside edge. Plus the top “tube” could have been a little higher but maybe it was just fine where it was.  Going forward, I’ll still keep them around for a rainy day and maybe you’ll see me using them in the future to cast a shadow when I’m bored and trying to throw shade.     [dt_gap height=”10″ /]

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