As some of you may know, I have been teaching workshops on still life photography using a special lighting technique I call “Lighting in Layers.” Of course, this technique is especially well suited to objects that don’t move, but everyone always asks if you can use this technique with people. Well… yes, you can, and I recently had the opportunity to prove it in a workshop setting at FOTOfusion 2014, this past January. I conducted a studio lighting workshop for light painting the nude, the first time I’ve taught this particular workshop, and everything turned out great.

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You can see how the lighting is slowly built up, adding one layer at a time until you have achieved the desired result. This image used 16 layers, including the blank “Background” layer and a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to colorize the couch a bit.

New England ASMP event March 22nd, 2014 at E.P.Levine just outside of Boston.

You can find some other blog posts on the subject of lighting in layers here:

Lighting Blog Posts