No hot girls today… but still… hot as hell! The man below is RAOUL… one hell of a model :-). Take a look at the result and after you enjoyed the picture, we will be back with some details on lighting!

- click on image to enlarge -

There are several ways of taking photos of someone wearing (sun)glasses. This is only one. But still this is the one we use the most. What we wanted to accomplish in this image is the lack of  reflex on the glasses. We have a very soft lighting, as you see in Raoul face. And even so that there is a very big lightsource it is not beeing reflected on the glasses. So how did we do that?

IT IS ALL ABOUT THE ANGLE OF REFLECTION!

Let’s have a closer look on the setup of strobes that light the image.The potential reflexes in the glasses would result from the front strobe (GREEN). The picture gets it’s depth from two hard lights from the back. Special about the two effect lights is, that both strobes have different lighting solutions attached. Take a close look on the picture to recognise the way of lighting. As you can see there is a relativly soft lighting on the left and a harder light on the upper side of the head.

We really do a lot of symmetric strobe settings. You know we are totally into that. But you should never do too much symmetry. Take another look at the picture. Raoul is looking directly into the camera. That’s already pure symmetry! The one strobe on the right (MAGENTA) is set up with a 30° honeygrid. The right sided flash (YELLOW) has a big beauty dish attached. Distances are about 1m (DISH) and 1,5m (GRID).

The background was lit with another flash. Blue gel! Martin, what’s the deal with you and the “gel-fetish”??? It’s very simple! Have you ever tried to change a gel? Probably yes! Have you ever tried to change a whole paper background? Probably yes! So if you did both…what’s quicker? See..now you got the point!

The main lightsource this time was a big striplight, 1,5m in size. To get more details on the outer sides of Raouls head we set it up horizontally .

Now that you know everything about the setup. You can take a closer look at the effects of the strobes.

As we are finished examining the setup, we can now talk about “photographing glasses”.

Actually, it is fairly simple. We already talked about the importance of the “angle of reflection”. What does that mean? It means, that the angle of incidence is identical with the ermergent angle (angle of  light that impacts onto the surface of the glasses equals the angle of the reflected light). Follow the green arrow on the sketch below. The angle alpha is always the same.  If you keep your camera in between the two arrows, you won’t get any light reflectedonto your lens and you then won’t see any reflections.

Have a closer look on the picture below. You (1) see that Raoul slightly bends his head forward. With this movement he decreases the angle alpha ( = increasing the angle for the camera in between the two arrows). You (2) can see that the striplight, as the main light source, is above Raouls head, coming straight down on him. (3) The light bounces off the glasses and is being reflected into the ground, not into the camera.

That’s it for today. Now you now know a cool setup to light a person wearing glasses. When you take the picture you can constantly check the reflections through the camera. To avoid further reflections heighten the mainlight or let your model bend the face a little towards the ground.

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