Professional photography rely on effort,creativity and technical know how and good equipments, producing good images every time does not depend on luck.Am still learning photography and experimenting is the way I choose develop my style. Mercy lives just a block way from the studio… I need to schedule a test shoot.. ring.. ring.

I am blasting her with a thousand watt off light {hard light} am mostly a florescent guy but today am going Tungsten so I dial my White balance to about 2700 {I normally use 4950} a couple of dials later{I shoot manual} we are snapping.

On the Picture below the white wall opens up the shadows on her face and a subtractive {black} bookend behind her catches spills and prevent bounce resulting is deep shadows behind her.

Working with mercy is easy she likes the Camera, is creative and pack lots of stamina {she has nice legs too – I hear these kind of legs are common where she comes from I don’t know whether having chicken as their staple food has anything to do with it}.

A light on the camera left and the white wall on the right which acts as a fill results in a “shadowy” cross lighting.

At times the bookends become a backdrops.

My thirst for deeper shadows and blown-out highlights see me move the light close,narrow the source and raise it higher to get this “street light” feel.

Reliable posing from mercy spices up my lighting efforts. Having a model who can pull a pose without lots of instructions gives the photographer space to work on the tech & creative side of things.

For this image I had to increase the Depth of light and place an additive fill {gold} on the camera left with the light above the camera. I dashed into my props box and dug up this “beltish” thing on her waist.

As I got used to the lighting. Ideas started popping, my model had long hair and a fan was in the vicinity I figured the fan blowing hair on one side coupled with dramatic lighting would give me a good Image .
so I set up the shot and cranked up the fan {Office/home desktop type} based how the fan brutally tosses papers around when they cross paths I figured blowing hair for it would be a piece of cake I went on to caution the model to prepare for a typhoon but alas the goddamn thing can not lift even a single stand of hair!!.

Some Cheating was required to get this Image It was easy and didn’t require me to crank up the shutter speed to freeze motion.. no Its not photoshop! {its fun to play around with the model and the camera than seat affixed to a monitor numbing my hand by doing gazillions of clicks}
It was as easy as the model standing and arching her back as she stares at the ceiling.. gravity will get the hair and earing in the direction you want, flip the image horizontally and voila!.

Its NOT all about the equipments! Skills,passion,ingenuity and hard work can beat best of equipment, I still see stunning pictures done in 1940`s!.