Angelic Lighting Result

Looking for a soft, ethereal effect? This setup is heaven-sent.

Photographing white on white can be very difficult, but in this photography class Karl and Urs Recher show you exactly how to do it, while adding a unique twist of their own to achieve a magical soft light.

This photography class skilfully combines the more technical elements of photography with individual creativity and the techniques covered in this tutorial can easily be applied to other genres of photography, such as still life.

The final result is achieved using a popular photography technique that ensures no post-production is necessary to achieve the final misty soft light.

In this class:

  • Studio Lighting: How to set up multiple studio lights
  • Three light setup for portrait photography
  • Flash power
  • Long exposure studio photography
  • Using filters in studio photography
  • Affordable alternatives to filters

To understand more about flash power, watch Chapter 3 of the Portrait section. You may also enjoy Understanding Flash Duration.

Questions? Please post them in the comments section below.

Comments

  1. Great video!! LOVE the effect! What exactly is the clear flexible piece of plastic the model is standing on?
    At first I thought it may be plexiglass, but it seemed flexible. I am really wanting something like this in my studio, but I cannot get a large enough piece of plexiglass down the stairs into my basement studio. Something flexible would be much more manageable.

    1. Hi thank you. Yes it is plexiglass – In Europe we call it Acrylic and it comes in 5mm thick or 3mm thick types and gloss or matt. This was the gloss one but even 5mm Acrylic can bend quite a bit so we put it on top of a more solid piece of board. The 3mm this Acrylic bends very easily, to a point and then it snaps!

  2. Sorry…me again…A lot of people may not have understood Karl/s “the cat’s Mother comment” but being British myself, at home if somebody referred to a female who was in your presence as “she” my Mother would say “WHO is she …the cats Mother?” in other words it was considered rude to say ‘she” in that person presence…. mention her by her name ..It’s nice to hear those expressions are still used

    Anyway FABULOUS videos thanks so much for your great videos and your sense of humour too Karl

  3. Urs…”I try to create a FOK effect” Karl stepping forward and Evie’s eye wide open

    Karl…”create a WHAAAAT? oooooh a FOG” hahaha!! so funny

    1. Hi Henrik, it’s like a ‘frosting’ filter a similar effect can by smearing by a thin layer putting vaseline on a clear filter.

  5. Curious – Couldn’t you have achieved the same (or similar) result by shooting just the single shot, then in post apply a strong Gaussian (or other) blur; and then, using a mask, simply erase the blur off the model?

    1. Hi, Jacob has some beautiful work. My understanding is that these images were created with the model in water, hence the floating hair and then my guess is a sheet of slightly frosted glass could have been used in front of the model or the ‘fog’ effect is a result of her being shot in turbid water.

  7. Hi Karl,

    Would this be an appropriate light set up for catalogue / e-commerce photographing? If not, what do you recommend?

    Cheers,

    Jorge.

  10. On this shoot there was concern with the model moving and causing a dark edge and a transparent edge. Would that issue be mitigated by having the model wear a white full length dress that would be more flowing in nature that what the model wore?

    1. Hi Gary, if she moves then yes you are correct it will be a problem no matter what dress. But a small amount of movement and it will be almost imperceivable.

  11. Vey clever having one set of lights fire after the other during the same exposure to open up some creative possibilities! Would it have been possible to achieve a similar kind of look by quickly throwing the camera out of focus in-between the flashes?

    1. Hi Michael, it may have been but you would have needed long enough in-focus for the main exposure before changing focus.

      1. Thanks for the reply! Good point. I’ll try it on a smaller scale and with a static object and see how it turns out. Fantastic course by the way – it’s one thing seeing lighting diagrams of how a shot was constructed but the added value is seeing how you methodically problem solve as the shoot develops. Really helpful!

  13. First class tutorial, really interesting and it gives the angelic look perfect technic for children’s
    portraits.

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