Ulli ….

When Ulli and I were talking about what we were going to shoot she suggested something like “Twiggie” but with a modern twist ….

Lesley Lawson (née Hornby; born 19 September 1949), widely known by the nickname Twiggy, is an English model, actress and singer. In the mid-1960s she became a prominent British teenage model of swinging sixties London with others such as Penelope Tree.

As it is a total contrast to the film noir shoot I had just finished I like the idea of keeping the retro theme going but in a total different style. Rather than a high contrast lighting form the sides, I used very soft light from the camera axis.

Using “Clam-shell” lighting and a white background, I metered the 2 Bowens 400ws flashes at f9.8 but shot at f8. By over exposing my images by 1/2 of a stop I got nice bright images but didn’t blow out the highlights. The second thing i needed to watch out for was keeping separation between Ulli and the background, as she had a lot of white on in some of the photos i didn’t want her to melt into the back ground . Watching the inverse square law i kept her about 1 f/ stop of light in-front of the background. As she is a 1/2 stop over exposed and 1 stop in front of the background, thus the back ground was 1/2 under exposed. This kept the whites looking white but different to each other and achieved the separation i was looking for.