Hey Steemit friends!

Today I'll be talking about one of my model shoots from 2014. I'm really satisfied with the end result of this shoot. I'd like to take you through the lighting setup / camera settings and some editing in Photoshop. I have to admit that Photoshop is my weak spot in photography but this is an example where I think it went right.

Here is my favourite shot from the shoot:

Model: Suzanne Moran
Camera Settings: Aperture f/6.3, ISO-100, Exposure 1/200 sec. Shot at 24mm.

When I shoot with external lighting, I don't use a light meter or get it exactly "spot on". I normally start with the main fill light at 1/4 power, take a shot, see how it is and then adjust the other settings accordingly. I knew in my own head that I was taking a full length body shot so I wanted to keep the whole body in focus. I chose the aperture at f/8, seen how it looked and then edited all the settings accordingly. In this case I opened the aperture up a little to f/6.3. With a wider aperture, it meant that I had to bring the strobe light power down as there was more light hitting the sensor of the camera.

The main fill light was a Bowens attached to a softbox camera left. Trying out a few different ideas, I eventually decided to drop a speedlight behind the model and I really like the result even though it's completely blown out. That's my usual setup, I normally work with a softbox as a main fill and a speedlight for highlights.

With my not-so great photoshop skills, I like to use the content aware fill tool as much as possible. The pink linen to the right of her legs was not there in the original photo. I applied minimal skin retouching and tidied up the hair. It was then colour graded using a curves adjustment layer.

(All photos copyright by myself Kevin Collins)

Any technical questions please feel free to ask. If you have any ideas of what I should post next or something you would like me to talk about that would be great! Peace!