The photography studio space is coming along. I have been diligently working away in my basement. Both my neck and shoulder adequately reflect the time I have spent rolling color (or lack there of depending on how you think of black) on the walls and ceiling.

Pamela in the StudioShot One ©

The original plan was to prime everything, but only paint the first 2/3rds of the space black, however after seeing the space in this strange half and half color palate, it just looked incomplete. Perhaps it is because my primer happened to be “primer gray” that it seemed unfinished, but so many primed, but unpainted cars around town makes me want to finish the job.

I am therefore going to coat all of walls and half the ceiling in Glidden Flat Black. Sure it makes the place look like a dungeon…a very, very black dungeon, but it WILL help cut down on reflections given the ultra small space (see my previous post Building a Small Basement Photography Studio – Part 1).

After completing the walls and ceiling, I will still need to repaint the floor. I did not use a drop cloth on the floor so I have a good number of splatters and the awful green color needs to go to keep strange color casts out of my photos. The jury is still out on the plan for this, but I will need to consult first with my paint guy at my local big box store.

Pamela in the StudioShot Two ©

Before anything was removed. Before any paint was applied. Before my neck started screaming, please stop with the constant looking up, I got Pamela down into the studio space to take a few shots. I wanted to share what can be done in a less than ideal space with little setup.

In Shot One, we are using one Calumet 750R strobe with a Nova 32 softbox. The background is a white sheet that is nailed to the wall of our basement. The light is overhead slightly to camera left.

In Shot Two a 2’x3′ piece of white foam-core was added below acting as a reflector. Notice the difference in the shadows on Pamela’s neck in the two shots. In retrospect, I feel her skin tone is a bit washed out (compared to Shot One) and I probably should have got it better in camera by lowering the bounce card.

Shot Three was taken with two Calumet 750R strobes both mounted with the Nova 32 softboxes. This one is by far, my favorite. The first light was again in the above mentioned configuration with the foam-core bounce, but a second 750R was places directly behind her, angled slightly upwards to minimize lens flare and set to 1.5 stops over the key to insure the the background was completely white.

Pamela in the StudioShot Three ©

The end shots were imported into Lightroom 3 where initial corrections were done, then edited in Photoshop CS5.

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