Studio Lighting - Tuesday, November 18, 2008 17:29 - 0 Comments

Clamshell Lighting for a Glamourous Headshot

Well we are back from the Cleveland workshop and it was amazing. Bright sun and clear skies were a super benefit… for someone somewhere… we had rain, wind, snow, rain, wind and cold. At least for Bri and I coming from the desert… We left Cleveland at about 28 degrees and landed at Sky Harbor at about 78. And that was at night.

I wanted to get a post done over the weekend, but dang… those Clevelanders (and Illinois, Indiana, Connecticut and Georgia) folks know how to have a workshop. It was amazing. We rolled with the inclement weather and did about a gazillion setups. No complaining… just rolled up sleeves and shooting shooting shooting.

Anyway, there was a discussion recently about clamshell lighting and I thought of this earlier shot I did of Briana with a simple clamshell setup. So I thought it may be nice to include it here while I put the finishing touches on this weeks Tech Sheet.

Clamshell lighting is sometimes described as a light source and a fill card, but I have always thought of it as two umbrellas, usually matching, right on the vertical axis of the camera with one over the lens and one under the lens. I have used this from very close to medium distance and love the results.

Cool thing is you can do this same lighting with small strobes as well as studio guns. With small strobes you have the added benefit (to me anyway) of powering them down and getting a very large aperture for limited DOF.

Let’s take a look at how this lighting works:

Continue…