Studio practice - working with shadows

When first setting up the studio we had to make sure that the background was going to be pure white, we did this by using a light meter, when the aperture was set at the average 5.6 the background was light but had a grey tint to stop this we lowered the aperture to make it pure white. 

When we first started taking the photos there was way too much light exposure, the lighting picked out a lot of the facial details that we didn't want there, our aim was to create light on the left hand side of the face and show those details and to create a shadow and a darkness on the right side. To stop too much exposure we changed the fitting on the left light from a reflector to a snoot this focused the light on a certain place which doesn't let too much light out to cover the whole face and creates a shadow on the right side. To make sure that the right side of the face was still visible rather than a black space we fitted the right light with a soft box which shone onto the face adding detail. We also had 2 lights with just plain reflectors at the back facing the all creating the background bright. 

After we did the light background where the model was against a light background and the shadow on the right was the main thing that stood out, we changed it to darkness so that the light from the snoot which was shining onto the left side of the face stood out more and the right side faded into the black background. In these photos we didn't have the soft box on because we didn't want any details going onto the right side of the face we just wanted it to be a blank space which faded into the back.

For the photos above we started experimenting with shadows, to get the shadow effect we created a very bright background and where the model was stood there was very little light. Once I got the lighting right I started to get the model to do different stances and things with their hands to create shapes and patterns.