Thanks to Jess and her excelent reasoning, we bought a few monolights yesterday. Last night, after I had worked on the softboxes for quite a bit, I built a quick makeshift studio so I could try them out with Jess.
The lights were great. Very bright.. enough that I’ll get plenty of use out of them before I decide I need something bigger and better. The pictures, however, were only so-so. Without the softboxes, the shadows were pretty harsh. And with only one real tripod (my camera tripod) placing the second light became problematic. And, with the limited space I had available (6′x8′ ish) it was even harder to produce any kind of control. The most difficult task was trying to keep the wall behind her clear of shadows. I’m going to look at some more examples of studio work online, so I can get a feel for how others deal with shadows and what I like best.
So now I’m practicing like mad trying to get everything figured out so that I can do it right the first time for the shoot this weekend. If anyone feels like being a very patient friend and model either tonight, or tomorrow night, give me call or shoot me an email.