I've been spending a fair bit of time in the studio lately. I've been particularly drawn to different beauty images. There are just endless avenues you can go down when it comes to beauty photography and it's really inspiring. With this shoot I wanted to achieve a really crisp and high contrast feel. The strong shadows were my main focus in achieving that.
To achieve strong shadows you need harsh light and you need to bring what ever you are using to block the light as close to the subject as possible. My choice of modifier on this shoot was a zoom reflector with a 10 degree grid to get a really focused projection of light. I then had 2 black pieces of foam core about 10 cm away from the models face, to block the light and give me those strong shadows. I then added to lights with strip boxes directed at the backdrop to give it crisp and clean white. Subject was about 4 meters away from the backdrop to make sure there was no light bouncing back at her from the backdrop.
Model: Abbey Maher from Chic Management
Hair & Makeup: Phoebe Fever
Canon 5Ds
Sigma 50mm 1.4 ART
3 Broncolor Siros 800
Main light - Zoom reflector and a 10 degree grid
Back lights - 2 strip boxes with grids