Breaking Down The 3 Cinematic Lighting Setups | Cary, North Carolina Photographer

Creating images in studio is probably the most difficult photography process for me. I find it extremely difficult from a creative standpoint to just start the photography process. That said, when I do start creative process I manage to emerge with images I absolutely enjoy and this shoot was certainly no exception.

Porsha the subject for this shoot I meet a few weeks ago at photography event hosted by Tim Bower. I didn’t go to the event to do photography although that is what the event was about, I went there to meet and network with local artist. They were some amazing models and photographers at the event which I really enjoyed. After the event I reached out to Porsha to determine if she would be interested in doing a shoot with me and she said yes, which was great. However, I didn’t get a chance to follow up until a few weeks later.

In planning for this photoshoot I sent Porsha a few inspirational images from her Instagram profile. Lately I found it is easier to simply send subjects their own images especially if I don’t have a team that I will be working with and if I think the look they have on their profile would actually work for the shoot I had in mind. I found images on her profile to illustrate the look for hair and makeup which I sent to her. The fact that she is a makeup artist made this process very easy. The color palette was chosen based on the looks I saw on her that really allowed her skin tone to pop. For the wardrobe I told her I wanted something chill but at the same time sexy. All these ideas she loved and from there it was just a matter of setting a date and time for the shoot.

In executing for this shoot I had some initial ideas of what I wanted to do from a lighting perspective but that all changed when I actually saw the results. I won’t go too much into detail about the lighting setup as that was done in the video below, so please check that out. What I would say is that with lighting I find that I color attracts my eye especially when I doing personal work. I believe this attraction comes from cinematic lighting I see multiple times in movies, so whenever I am working with artificial light indoors color is almost always a critical component.

In conclusion, this shoot was a great of fun and Porsha made the process extremely easy. She brought some good music for us to vibe to and I especially loved the Erika Badu song selections some of which I have never heard before. Please be sure to checkout the behind the scenes video which goes into a lot more detail about the lighting.

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