Lingerie | location lighting | boudoir photography

Here are some shots from a location lighting workshop in London over the weekend. The technical notes are further below…make up by the wonderful Nikki Milina.

– the objective was to use studio lights but then see whether speedlites could do the job too (in order to see what can be achieved travelling light and setting up quickly).
– Manual meeting rather than TTL as we were using the speedlites as mini studio lights (plus TTL flash can be a little inconsistent).
– natural light – then reflected – then flash was the order because that’s what you might do when having to shoot quickly or with a subject that needed some warm up time.
– tungsten can be used in hotel rooms to some useful effect – we cheated and used modelling bulbs.
– we interchanged using a parabolic reflector, barn doors and grid with some studio lights and then replaced them with the equivalent speedlites and modifiers (I used the pack from Viewfinder Photographic that includes a small beauty dish, grids and a snoot).
– ambient was about ISO 800 1/60 @ F4 but I chose to kill it off by shooting at 100 ISO and most of the time between 1/80 – 1/160 and f4-F5
– directional light, no softboxes – sandwich (cross-over) lighting with both the speedlite and studio flash heads. Pushed one light as far as possible before introducing a second light.
– general consensus was that speedlites in a small space could match the studio lights – but the absence of a modelling light meant that it took longer to set up each shot.