If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you know that I recently did a big 12 day shoot for one of my favorite clients. My main mandate was to shoot well composed,  evenly lit photos to be used in a new edition of their best selling didactic cosmetology book. As a second mandate, I had to produce “artistic” shots to be used as chapter openers and page fillers.

So the first thing I asked them was what they meant by “artistic”. You know Yanik, dramatic stuff with cool shadows and contrasts. Cool. Just the kind of thing I love doing.

Since this was a step by step guide describing various cosmetology techniques, I had some free time in between shots to experiment and click away. Why do a separate session just for those shots when I could save time and shoot them in between the step by step shots? What was challenging was to work around the working hairstylist without interfering too much. I couldn’t direct the models. I just had to get what I could and anticipate what they might do.

For most of these drama shots, I basically just kept one strobe on  with a 2×3 softbox that I would move around. You’ll also notice that almost all of those shots were done in back lighting to get even more shadows. I would position the strobe between 90 and 45 degrees in front of the camera.

Here are a couple of shots that I did using this one light approach.

As an early Christmas present, here’s a time lapse video  done with my iPhone 3G using the iTimeLapse app. Fun stuff!

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