As you might remember from a recent post, I was surprised to find how dark my starting point was when re-processing some images from a few years ago.

A few days ago I had a shoot with Naomi and I was trying to create a softer light that would still highlight her muscles, and realized the raw images were very similar to the ones with Vanesa in that other post.

There are a few reasons for this compromise, I can say now with some confidence. While shooting, I wanted soft light from one side, so I used two large, long gridded softboxes. The grids keep the light from spilling beyond the target (Naomi) so preserving the darkness of the rest of the studio. I threw a rim light camera left, opposite the softboxes.

But if either of these two sources, the grid or the rim light, were turned up any brighter, the shadows started to lose their depth as the extra light splashed around the studio. And so the final result is this dark image:

Now that I think about it, I’m reasonably sure I could have brightened the lights and simply darkened the scene to create the shadows, rather than shoot dark and make everything brighter later. That’s definitely what I’m going to try next time.

The result has a taste of HDR which I’m not really happy with, but I think the image is, on balance, pretty close to where I want it to be.