Page 84 - Lighting the Un-lightable 2015

in power than the B4 heads, they can - and did - provide exactly what I needed to make

the scene work.

As Figure 2 shows, I placed both heads of the B2 so that, when they fired, the light released

would strike the Photoflex 7-in-1 reflector. This would do two things: First, it would fill the

spaces where the B4s with the Fresnel lenses were insufficiently diffusing, and, second,

this would further break the edges of the light from the Cine Reflectors so that the volume

of light would be more consistent. The reflector was set at about a 45 degree angle to the

bed, and each of the B2 heads were at about 45 degrees to the reflector. Typically, complex

angles work better since the diffusion pattern assures that more light will be broken and

the volume of light, therefore, will be more consistent.

So, as the images of Akira in white show, the images we created together were exactly what

I wanted. They were, as I like to say, very George Hurrell. There is detail in the shadows, the

whites are clear and crisp and there is a lot of detail, and the colors are superb. The next

question was whether or not I could move the setup in tact to the other room.

As I noted earlier in this article, the differences between the two rooms weren't trivial. For

example:

 The sliding glass door was parallel to the bed in the second room and

therefore parallel to where Akira would be, whereas, in the first room, it would

be behind me and out of the way. Having it parallel to the bed in the second

room potentially would limit where I could place the second B4, and it could

easily limit the angles from which I could work.

 In the second room, the dresser with a mirror was facing the foot of the

bed. In the first room, it was to the right of the bed and to the right of where

I would be standing. In the first room, I could rely on the fact that light from

the strobes could - and did - reflect from the bed on to Akira. In the second

room, that was not likely to happen. So, there was a possibility that I would

need to add additional light from another source.

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