A Little Bit of Over-Exposure.

(Storm)

Over-exposure is not always a bad thing. When done right, over exposure can be used as an artistic statement. For our purpose, over-exposing did not mean raising the ISO or turning the power all the way up. It meant selectively lighting a part of our image really REALLY bright. In our case: the face and especially the eyes.

Frankly, I did not have a lot of experience with over-exposure so my friend Stephany (one of my classmates) and I decided to experiment.

We started with our basic two-lights setup:

- A medium softbox was used for the keylight
- An AB800 with a 10 degree gridspot was used for the hair light















Notice that the light doesn't come from the front of the model but more from the back. We knew we wanted the final picture to be somewhat from a profile perspective and so the softbox was placed accordingly. Had it been placed at the front, the light would have cascaded onto her left shoulder and ruined that shadow there. Remember, shadow is your friend, it creates mood. A flag was also positioned between the softbox and the black background to keep the latter black.

An AlienBee 800 (thanks Steph!) with a 10 degree gridspot was used for the hairlight. Take note that without it, her hair would have "melted" into the black background. We didn't want that.

I also took the shot below with the same setup but at a slightly different angle and with a reflector (notice the reflections in the eyes).