I just shared the recipe for this photo in the comments for it, and thought I'd put it up here in a journal post so people can have a go at it should the mood take them..



Ingredients for the above photo:
1x model of the dancer variety.
1x dance studio with white walls and polished wooden floor.
1x camera and lens around, erm, 50mm probably.
2x lights with flags.
1x light with softbox.

Recipe:
1.set up the two lights with flags a few feet form the wall and out of shot to the left and right, (the flags control the light spill), point the lights at the wall lighting it as evenly as possible, and crank them up to full-whack.

2.position your light with the softbox about 4 feet high and pointed right at the wall from about 30 feet back, don't turn it on yet.

3.position yourself right by the softbox, shutter at sync speed (1/125, 1/180, whatever) and ISO 100 (you can crank it later if your lights are lacking juice).
Pick an aperture about mid-range, f8 maybe, take a shot, is the wall all white and just overexposed? roll up and down the aperture range until the wall is pure white, so is some of the floor, histogram is going nuts, that kind of thing, we will call this 'f:good'.

4.add model, she needs to be at least 8 feet from the wall, take a shot, she should be a semi-silhouette (not much detail on her) but not too wrapped at the edges. and she'll be making a dark shadow on the floor. roll up and down from f:good until you get that, not too much light wrapping around her (you can move her closer to you to aid this too), when it looks right you whack-on the flash in the softbox right by you...

5. starting off on low power wind up the softbox flash until you get a nice exposure on the model but don't kill the shadow. we call this setting 'sweeeet'.

6. push the button

These people are cool:






♦