HOLLYWOOD STYLE USING LIGHT ON LIGHT TECHNIQUE

It is said that using current available studio flash strobes you cannot achieve the style of lighting redolent of the classic Hollywood pictures produced in the 1940s and 1950s, except perhaps using the Fresnel type which gives the more contrasting variation between light and shadow typical of the continuous lights available to photographers in these eras.

So, not having the Fresnel available I worked on using a technique called a light on a light in a portrait setting. Basically this is using a hard edged reflector on one strobe as the key light positioned to light only the head and shoulders of the subject and in the same position straight behind it so close that the two could be touching, a strobe fitted with a much larger softbox set at one to two stops less than the key light. The aim is that we have a clear hard edge to the light around the head and shoulders with a tapering spread caused by the larger softbox. The image below is what I got using this method.

The key light was an 18inch, beauty dish with a grid fitted to focus the light and covered only the head and shoulders. The light behind it was fitted with a 4feet x 4 feet softbox. Initially the key was metered at an aperture of f9 (at 1/125 sec shutter speed, below the sync speed of the camera) and the softbox metered separately at f5.6. When set the resultant combination was metered at f10. The image was converted to black and white in Photoshop and some very slight softening applied

The model was Jasmine Sirs and the photo taken at our Bakehouse Hill Studio in Darlington, UK.