I shot Nicole in November for my Portrait-52 project.  She needed some head shots done for an agency, and came by to do some shooting.  After we were done the shots we needed, I decided to experiment a bit with a bit of a different lighting setup.  I have always loved the look of Martin Schoeller, some of who’s work is find in a google image search.  You can see he has a definite “look”, which has been played around at replicating by a few different people.  I shot the following of Nicole with an aim to sort of replicate that look (though I don’t know exactly what magic sauce Martin has).

Here are the images.

 

If you’re interested, this was shot with an 85mm f/1.4 lens at f1.8 on a crop body, and the lighting was done with only the modelling lights on my studio strobes.  The aperture (which controls how much light the flash puts on the subject) was far too wide open and with even the lowest level of flash I got basically a white frame.  So I turned on the modelling lights and put them nice and close, and boom, f/1.8 at 1/100th at ISO 200.

As you’ve seen through the links to the various sites trying to duplicate the lighting, I’m missing a back light and a fill light behind the photographer, but still, it’s fun to play and experiment now and then.