Contemporary Nude

SKILL LEVEL: Intermediate to Advanced


This shot is part of a model's portfolio. We decided that the model would not be recognisable. The concept was to create an image that was in some way mysterious.

Lit from above with an Elinchrom strip light, we used a simple principle in our approach which is that light can not see around corners.

By placing the light slightly behind the model we could control the amount of light that was falling on to the front of her figure and her face.

It is important to remove or control any elements in front of the model that would reflect or bounce light back into the shadow areas, as this would ruin the effect.

To achieve this we covered everything that was close and infront of the model with a black material.

Note - Black velvet is the most none reflective material that I know at around only 1% reflectivity.

Another problem that we encountered was that stray light from the Strip/Main light was spilling onto the background and was lightning and diluting the effect from the background light /tin foil.

We solved this problem by placing a gobo (A black piece of board or plastic) behind the strip light (Long thin soft box) to ensure that the light dropped directly from the soft box onto the model and did not spill on the back ground.

Another Elinchrom head was placed on the floor behind the model and was angled down to bounce light up from some crinkled tin foil.

When a beam of light hits the different angles of the foil the light is bounced away at different angles (The angle of incidence equals the angle of reflectance) this can produce a quite interesting dappled effect.