Light Directions

This is a composition I had in mind for a long time. Thanks Tatjana for your patience when I took dozens of pictures while moving the lights all around you! I think I managed to keep her happy, since she still smiled on pictures taken later during the portrait session. If you are interested, you can find a set of photos here.

I used one D-Lite strobe from different directions in order to obtain a number of pictures which I then put together to get this one:

Photo by Me (large on Flickr), 2010.

I was interested in how it would look like when pictures of the same face, lit from different angles, were put together in one image. The pictures are ordered according to the angle of the light in the respective photograph. The one in the middle is the starting point where the light comes from the direction of the camera. To the left and right the horizontal angle is then increased/ decreased in 45° steps. The same applies to the vertical axis. The single pictures on the right, at the top and at the bottom are lit from behind, from the top and from the bottom.

The whole set of pictures could be kind of wrapped around to form a sphere around the model. Hope that doesn't sound too complicated!?

Anyways, I think it looks quite funky and it is interesting to see how such a simple thing like the position of one single light source can change the character of a face in a portrait entirely. From now on I will have a nice example at the ready, when I have to give another flash or studio light workshop ;-).