The Answer

For this photo shoot I had limited supplies (i.e one flash) so I had to get creative with the lighting and make do with what we had. Of course 3 strobes with a generator would have been way more cool but we don't have that yet...

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Let's deconstruct this. I want to go backwards and talk about the post work (Photo-shop) and then talk about lighting set up.-

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Post Work:

I took the image in RAW and opened it up in Adobe Bride for my basic lighting changes and color. I also adjusted the over all color to give it a green theme to go along with his eyes.Then I saved it to JEPG format and adjusted my "Curves" setting to bring out the dark shadows and lighten the skin. I did some basic retouching to his face and removed some of the blemishes. You will also notice the car light. I added a lens flare filter to make it look a little more interesting then a light blob.

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Original File (Above)

After Adobe Bridge Edits (Above)

Light setup:

A) With most photo shoots it's very important to have back lighting, this makes any image look way more dynamic and give it more depth. Well I only had one flash so I thought we could just use the other car we brought and parked it in a T-Bone position so the lights could shine through the windows.

B) Inside the car where David was, (the modal) we left all the car lights on. The cars inside lights had cool blue and yellow lights that added some interesting color and also helped to fill in his face with light.

C) My main light source SB900 shot through a white umbrella that was pushed right up against the windshield of the car. Shooting through the glass actually acted as another diffuser and lit the whole inside of the car way better then I thought it would.

D) The diver side door was open all the way so we put a reflector right next to David which caught the other cars light (A) and pushed it right back against his side.

That was the over all set up. I hope you had fun with this experiment.

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Cheers,

Peter M.