I shoot with one light only for the majority of my beauty shoots. It's a 300w strobe that I keep on 1/4 power. The umbrella in the shot is a 2ft softbox umbrella. It's up 4'2" and 4'5" away from the model. The model is also 4'6" away from a black background. Noticed the light is not facing the Skye, but rather turned a little more than 45 degrees from her. This does two things, it keeps too much light from hitting the background, and also feathers the light across the model's face which gives you a more even exposure across the subject. Below is a light diagram. It's my first one, so you'll have to bear with me while I learn to use them. :)
Here are the before and after pictures of how the shoot came out. I put my camera settings on the picture. You can see from the before picture that the image is way underexposed. I normally underexpose my images because I really like high contrasted images. When I'm shooting inside, on a black background, I will underexpose a little more, just to deepen the background. In a small space, the other tricks to darken your background, i.e moving your subject farther from the background, or adding Vflats to block the light are not easily accomplished. My shooting space is a little over 20ft in length, so fitting my model, and everything else is a tight fit. This is one of the way's I've adapted to get the images I want with the space I have. I'm sure other photographers may have tricks that they use to accomplish the same thing.
The first step of my editing is always camera raw, and with a few clicks I was able to lighten the image and bring back her hair which was lost in the dark.
Thus concludes the first of hopefully many behind the scenes looks at my process for shooting in a small space. As always, feel free to hit me up with any questions you have.
