Had the pleasure of doing a shoot with my friends over at dPT hair salon a couple months ago to capture some of the wonderful hair that they do. They have a decent-sized academy and these shots were to demonstrate certain techniques and styles. We shot in their downtown salon that has these great, north-facing windows that have a soft reflection of light from the sky and the gray building across the street. But the call was around 6pm and they were doing another class in that room, so we set up a sweep with a couple of lights in a back area.

I went with an open beauty dish (no grid) for the key, set fairly high ranging from 10 to 30 degrees off axis. And then I blasted the back of the gal’s heads with a 30 degree gridded strobe. This all was set against a thunder grey seamless to take down the background and contrast the girls. They picked out the shots that they felt did the job for them, and I cleaned and prepped them.

I tried to go through as well and find a couple of more interesting shots to play with. One I ended up killing off just about everything leaving a glowing, floating head. It helps that it was Alexis from Look whom I’ve worked with before and is just awesome! And using some deep shadows and darkness I shaped another shot to let the other gal Tory really come through. In both of these I was pushing their face and highlights to be at the top of the histogram and find that wonderful fall off.

So I think this qualifies as a good lighting exploration as I’m happy with how the light ended up caressing their faces. And I like how I was able to push the shadows down in a convincing enough manner. It’s always nice to have a project also be a lesson.