We were having so much fun with Regina (our contest winner) in her Utah studio that I decided to do a bunch of videos of a few of the setups. (Here is Regina’s blog post on the past weekend.)

This one was made possible when Regina said she had four matching small umbrellas. I used to do this setup and haven’t done it in years, so we got them all out and built the “4 umbrella madness” setup.

Basically this is best with as small an umbrella as possible. I had 4 22″ Speedotron soft white umbrellas when I used to do it. Regina’s are 32″ Westcott’s and they were lovely.

Four AB800’s were at barely above minimal power settings and we placed them all around the camera. For the first shot of Clarissa, we had her about four feet from the bank of umbrellas. We used no fill on the sides, allowing the edge of her shoulders and arms to go dark from reflecting the dark studio.

Here is Megan’s shot from this setup, video to follow.

Carisa is about 4 feet from the umbrella bank

Next we moved her in close to the umbrellas – about 2 feet away. The light wraps more around her face and shoulders here.

Video:

Next up is Megan’s shot of Carisa at 2 feet from umbrella bank.

Carisa is now about two feet from the bank of umbrellas

More of Megan’s work can be seen at her Flickr site.

Bonus Video: Using the Four Umbrella Beast with the model against the backdrop can produce a subtle “ring light” look to the image. With the larger 32″ umbrellas, the soft shadow surrounding the subject is a bit wider, but it still looks pretty cool. My original setup with the 22″ umbrellas produced a smaller, edgier shadow around the subject. This is a fun little video, but no sample at this point… hoping we can get one in soon.

An additional video from the shoot.

More from the fabulous weekend at the entrance to Zion National Park and the wonderful Regina Pagles coming up. We have lots to share.

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