I know I have been a bit quiet on the blog lately, sorry to all my subscribers. I have however been busy. Busy getting my stock operations in order again after moving back to South Africa. First thing i have tasked myself with is finding good models, it really makes a difference when you have someone in front of your camera that can help you deliver quality images. secondly I have been setting up and arranging shoots out of a garage studio seeing as that is the only space available to me at the moment. Very small space, difficult to work with, but better than nothing. Before shooting as always comes the planning phase, so I have been planning my shoots, organizing wardrobe, makeup and putting in as much effort into styling as possible. All the extra time is definitely paying off in better constructed images. One of my first shoots after being back was of a good friend of mine, she has amazing eyes and fair skin, so I wanted to do something in studio that concentrated on these features and we came up with the concept of the feature image.

For this shoot i essentially used 3 lights, 2 for the background and one on my model. I found that adding a reflector underneath the model filled in the shadows eyes nicely and helped them to pop. I have provided a lighting diagram below for those who are interested to see exactly what light modifiers were used. The full shoot can be seen here.

Last weekend was the first time I have had the opportunity to use a beauty dish. I love experimenting with light and learning new ways to shape it. I must say that I was very impressed with the results. Before stepping into the studio and experimenting, I did my research and came across a few helpful articles on how best to use a beauty dish and how it works.

A beauty dish focuses diffused light onto your subject, giving a very soft light with decent falloff to help shape the face. It is best used for close up portraits and helps to evenly light facial features. The dish reflects light from the light source onto a dish which then reflects the light again onto your subject. The optimum distance to place the beauty dish from your subject is roughly double the dish size, obviously you can adjust this to get different effects. A beauty dish can be used as a key light or as a fill light to help give life to eyes and smooth out shadows. Beauty dishes come in different

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