This is part three in a series of excerpts from ESSENTIALS: Studio Lighting for Nude Photography, by Dan Hostettler. Dan has been a professional beauty and nude photographer for more than 15 years and has been internationally published and featured in GQ Online, The India Times, FashionONE TV, GoodLight Magazine, MUZE Magazine, FOTOdigital, and many more.
–MM Edu
In contrast to the previous clamshell lighting tutorial, this setup uses a light-design where you and your model’s area for movements is much wider. We will go for a clean white lighting in general while also creating a subtle side light with the key light and a reflector bounce.
What’s It For?
Because we evenly light the entire model, the design is ideal for clean nude art or editorial glamour shots (in a soft way; also referred to as Today’s European Glamour.
By directing the key to come at your model a bit from the side and just catching her with the edge of the fall-off, it gets the characteristic of an art, portrait or beauty setup. With a smaller modifier for the key light – for example a beauty dish – it would become a fashion flair nude or commercial glamour setup (with harder shadow edges).
These simple and very versatile settings are great as you can get a wide range of results in a limited time frame. The different outcome is just based on what modifiers you decide to use for your key light.
The Setup
I use my two 2.5×4’ (80 x 120 cm) softboxes again, this time in vertical positions, pointing them towards the white paper-backdrop so that it is evenly lit. I set both flashes to full power and adjust my aperture (f-stop) until the white is just clipping – blinking on the LCD. Remember, reading the histogram.
The background is now well defined; in other words: It’s just blown out 
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The key light is equipped with a Ø4’ (Ø120cm) octobox (for round shaped catchlights), placed from about 8 feet (2.5m) off the ground creating a broad, beautiful, soft lighting that still adds dimensionality and directionality to it.
Tech
- 3x 400 Ws Monoblocs
- Key light: Octobox Ø4’/Ø120cm, powered around 180 Ws
- Background lights: 2x Softbox 2.5×4’/80x120cm powered around 400 Ws
- Nikon D700
- Sigma AF 24-70mm / 2.8
Credits
- Photography: Dan Hostettler
- Model: Melisa Mendini
- Hair & Makeup: Aneta Lozkova
- BTS photography: Jan Prerovsky
Contact Sheet
Behind the Scenes
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ESSENTIALS: Studio Lighting for Nude Photography - by Dan Hostettler
If you liked this article there’s much in Dan’s 280 page book, which features Jenni Czech and Melisa Mendini, delivers the perfect “one size fits all” access: theory, showcases and exercises photography newcomers, amateurs, aficionados and versed pros.
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