Lighting – Mug Shot
So I thought I'd play with some mug shot lighting while I was working on a strobist exercise. I (honestly) usually get like 1 good shot from a lighting setup when playing around. I think I got three this time.
For me, it's between the first and the third ones... I should have written this sooner as I can't really remember exactly the setup here. There was a hair light above and slightly behind, a single light to the camera right and a homemade single, silver, reflector on camera right. I believe the first two are 90 degree light and the last 45 degree. The light and reflector were about 1-2 feet away from my face. I'm using some home-made lighting here.
I picked up some reflective bench clamp lights and am using florecent daylight power save bulbs to go into 'em. This is the metal part of the light, it's busted up a little 'cause the cat knocked down my light stand one night and trashed it. The bulb part screws into the top section here and sticks out through the cone shape.
The light stands were yet another trip to Home Depot. I bought some concrete and some long length of wood. Using some old paint cans I stuck the wood in there with some concrete and just clamp the lights to the wood... it's not bad, although very low light output.
As for the reflector... well that's just tin-foil taped to a large piece of cardboard. I use the same light stands with some hand clamps to hold it in place.
Strobist: Lighting 102 Unit 1.2
1. Light has depth of field.
2. With enough light, you can turn a white wall black.
So I didn't quite get black on that third pic. I started out with a 0 degree light moving 45 degrees camera right. The third is 90 degrees camera right. I didn't have too much play around room so I couldn't test moving further away from the basement wall to see if I could get it darker. The camera was about 4/5 feet away from the subject, the subject was about 7/8 feet away from the back wall. Thinking back to it, they really weren't too far away from each other but I had the light very close to the can (around 1-3 feet the whole exercise).
