Help! Head Shots of African American?
steveb
African American male model which is a first time for me. He wants a makeup
artist of course and I want to do a first rate job for him. I am using a
Nikon CP990, 2 110ws strobes and probably a white and silver 54in umbrella.
I've used this rig for many other situations and I get very convincing
results. I need to decide the best color background to use and need to know
if I will need any exceptional settings to get optimal results on a very
dark skinned model. Any help is appreciated. Thanx.
later steveb
RDKirk
srbg...@earthlink.net says...
If the makeup artist knows how to tone down the shininess of oil-rich
black skin, then the predominant issue is solved. Otherwise, keep the
lighting contrast low (dark skin provides its own contrast) and place
the highlights carefully.
You can do good work with either a light or dark background in B&W. In
color, strong, solid, primary colors work well with dark skin. Pastels
work less well.
--
RDKirk
"Men occasionally stumble on the truth, but most of them pick themselves
up
and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Winston Churchill
UrbanVoyeur
grey, but that's just a preference.
I would also open up 1- 1/2 stops of exposure, and use a softbox or white
umbrellas. If possible, Polaroid.
Watch out for the shine from oily skin - powder frequently. It's not that
the model's skin will be any oilier than anyone else's. The problem is the
shiny areas will be so much brighter than his skin that they will produce
uncontrollable hotspots.
"RDKirk" <rdk...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:EOuba.16740$qB5....@nwrddc01.gnilink.net...
Francis A. Miniter
area, though I have generally shot black and white film using (two)
natural light sources (at right angles to each other). I strongly
prefer a white background. The reason is that if I want to lighten up
in the print, there is no background effect. As one responder said,
keep the contrast reasonably low. One thing to keep in mind is that
black hair is very much darker than dark brown skin. To get any texture
in the hair, you have to get the hair into Zone II at least, preferably
Zone III. That moves the skin tones to either Zone IV or V. I myself
have not found the need for filters on the camera.
Francis A. Miniter
PuterK
exposures and reviewing the result. If you want a challenge try doing
a wedding with a black bride in a white dress. On the silver
umbrella, I'd maybe opt for a plain white one or a shoot-through
screen, simply to reduce the skin glare.
On Tue, 11 Mar 2003 21:13:36 GMT, steveb <srbg...@earthlink.net>
wrote:
steveb
Puter...@no.net wrote on 3/12/03 10:36 AM:
Thanx to all of your responses and now I have some good advice to hopefully
make this shoot a success for me, the photographer and the model.
later steveb
zeitgeist
If you have trouble with black skin then you are having problems with all
your portraits, you just don't notice it as readily with white skin, black
skin reveals bad lighting.
Proper exposure is proper exposure. a wedding photog should be able to
photograph a white dress next to black tux and get detail in the dress,
certainly get good skin tones, and show a sense of cloth in the tux.
This may surprise a lot of folks, but don't take that advice to dull shiny
skin, take some vaseline and shine away.
Look if you are shooting with umbrellas or small softboxes you are going to
get bright blocked up highlights, and with black skin you will see it more
obviously, just like you see blocked up white spots or spectral reflections
in eye glasses.
look at some department store catalogues, look at leather goods, how do
they do black leather jackets, shoes and purses, especially look at ones
with lighter colored objects with them or with models, do they look like
they over exposed by 2 stops?
Do they look like they powdered the black surfaces to reduce reflections?
heck no, the polished them, they are photographing the shine, they want
those highlights.
they use a BIG light source and put a BIG soft highlight and let it reveal
the texture and shape, otherwise black is black. your white brollie up
close as you can should do the trick for a head shot. use a reflector on
the other side.
look at how they photograph sports cars, they usually use a black porche or
Ferrari with a blond draped on the hood. do they spray the car with dulling
spray, do they over expose it two stops, no they polish the thing so much
and the photograph the lights reflecting off it. they usually hang a huge
light bank across the studio, or shoot outside at twilight when the area is
lit by a huge lightbank of the entire horizon.
general rule of thumb, the light source should be twice as big as the
subject.
don't use two brollies on either side of the camera, two light sources only
give you two highlights, and with them on either side of the camera you will
likely distort the face, wide spaced highlights will make the face,
,especially the nose seem fatter and wider, the smile lines will be deeply
etched like Fred Flintstone.
don't worry about the background, a head shot is just that, full frame of
the head, its not a head and shoulders.
this reply is echoed to the z-prophoto mailing list at yahoogroups.com
RDKirk
blkhat...@yahoo.com says...
>
> look at how they photograph sports cars, they usually use a black porche or
> Ferrari with a blond draped on the hood. do they spray the car with dulling
> spray, do they over expose it two stops, no they polish the thing so much
> and the photograph the lights reflecting off it. they usually hang a huge
> light bank across the studio, or shoot outside at twilight when the area is
> lit by a huge lightbank of the entire horizon.
>
If one is doing portraits, one must please the subject. I've shot quite
a few black people, and none of them liked looking shiny like patent
leather (it's actually a racial slur). With softer lighting and drier
skin, the texture of the skin shows beautifully.
RDKirk
says...
> One thing to keep in mind is that
> black hair is very much darker than dark brown skin. To get any texture
> in the hair, you have to get the hair into Zone II at least, preferably
> Zone III. That moves the skin tones to either Zone IV or V. I myself
> have not found the need for filters on the camera.
>
To get highlights in the hair, you light for it the way you do anyone
else's hair. The hair of black people is fewer zones darker than the
skin than is the case with pale people--and one doesn't overexpose a
Causasian brunette to get detail in the hair.
Put the skin into the zone it's supposed to be in.