Need help with portrait ?lighting?

[Heroique]

To complicate matters, she has very dark skin, so a lot of light is mandatory...

My goal is to make her look the same as she does in normal daily activity...

I'm not a portrait photographer, but aren't these irreconcilable goals?

Come to think about it, it really would make a great thread topic:

"Is it mandatory that dark skinned people need a lot of light?"

[lenser]

I'm not a portrait photographer, but aren't these irreconcilable goals?

Come to think about it, it really would make a great thread topic:

"Is it mandatory that dark skinned people need a lot of light?"

Total nonsense! What is needed is accurate exposure for either one! If you must test to believe this, use a good old Kodak gray card to establish exposure for any of the group (you could actually do that with only the card and no person in the scene), from pure white albino to the darkest of the dark. Make your shots of each one at exactly that same exposure, process them normally, then print them all with the exact same enlarging exposure as well. You will find that they all balance normally for the "look" of that person's skin density. Exposure accuracy is everything! Skin color or tone is meaningless.

[Heroique]

Exposure accuracy is everything! Skin color or tone is meaningless.

Makes sense, and should eliminate Leigh's "I need extra light" complication.

Reminds me of the famous "black cat in the white snow / white cat on the black carpet" exposure problem.

"What happens if both cats are in the image?" the curious child asks...

[lenser]

Heroique<

Your conundrum is why God invented gray cards and incident meters.

Tim

[Richard Johnson]

I suppose they'd need extra light if you intended to make them look lighter. Any lighter people in the same photo would appear as ghosts....

[Daniel Stone]

Hey Leigh,

Pretty much ANY time I have a question on a lighting scenario, I refer back to Dean Collins, and his wonderful set of videos that he made back in the 1980's.

pay close attention to what he says about shooting different densities of skin around the 22:10 mark

[Ian Gordon Bilson]

Lenser has it covered,exactly. Excellent advice.

[lenser]

I should have also emphasized to avoid using a reflective meter reading (on the skin) unless you are fairly well versed with the zone system and know how to match the skin tone to a specific zone density that you expect to print and then to adjust you exposure so that you will achieve that zone specifically. Reflective is fine for the gray card that I earlier mentioned. Incident metering for the faces and various skin densities is the way to go unless you have the gray card. This is because it always finds the accurate neutral exposure since it measures the light and not the reflectivity. It doesn't care what the tone is, it only cares how much light is falling on the scene.

[Heroique]

...avoid using a reflective meter reading (on the skin) unless you are fairly well versed with the zone system and know how to match the skin tone to a specific zone density that you expect to print and then to adjust you exposure so that you will achieve that zone specifically...

I like your tips on reflective readings, but I’m questioning whether a reflective-meter user (sans gray card) really needs special knowledge about various skin tones – other than his or her own. For example, if the photographer knows which zone the palm of his own hand falls on, shouldn't this knowledge be sufficient to choose an exposure appropriate for all skin tones? That is, if you expose your palm for the correct zone, this exposure will, automatically, place everyone else's skin tone on its appropriate zone too. No specialized knowledge of various skin tones is necessary.

I remember the "palm strategy" from John Shaw's Closeups in Nature, which seems would be fine for human portraiture too, in a pinch:

"The skin on most people's palms is about one stop lighter than middletone. To make sure of this, meter your palm, and compare it against a middle tone reading. It will definitely be lighter than middletone."

Shaw's upshot – if you're like most people, meter your palm, then open one stop. Or better, open up until you've placed your palm in the zone where your testing knows it should be.

[DrTang]

BACK

LIGHTING


the cure for everything


lots of backlight..a white reflector or two

shoot from slightly above eye level