I came across Ab Sow on instagram and flicked him a quick message to see if he was keen to shoot. Ab is a dancer based in brisbane but travels all over for different shows.
I had two looks in mind for this shoot. For the first look I wanted a subtle, moody, low key feel. For the second one I was after some strong contrasts and a bit more edgy.
Model: Ab Sow - Brisbane based dancer.
Canon 5Ds Body
Sigma 50mm 1.4 ART lense
3 Boncolor silos 800 heads
1 Broncolor Parra 88
1 Broncolor beauty dish
1 Broncolor Parra 222
First look. I shot it on a blue backdrop, but pulled the model off the backdrop about 2 meters to get a really deep dark blue tone. Basically any light that hit the backdrop was just spill light.
I shot this in a 3 light setup. My main light was broncolor's 88 Parabolic reflector. This was set off to camera left, slightly behind the subject and hand and directed essentially towards the camera to really feather it off and get a nice soft wrap of light on the model. My second light was a beauty dish set above the model and about half a meter behind him with a slight tilt. Illuminating the top of his head and giving a soft rim light to his shoulders. 3rd light was a Broncolor Parabolic 222, which is a huge modifier. I had it set behind me to camera right on low power to give me some soft subtle fill.
Second look. This was a lot simpler of a setup. I wanted a clean white backdrop for the models dark skin to pop off. So I simply had 2 bare bulbs going into 2 V-flat to give me a clean even spread on the white seamless backdrop. Then I put a zoom reflector with a 10degree grid on it directly above the model. Then for the last section I added the 222 Parra as a crosslight.