Westcott University — Timeless Fashion Portraits with the Zeppelin

This image is from fashion portraits I shot recently while testing out the incredible 59-inch Zeppelin Parabolic Softbox. This modifier is fantastic for full body fashion portraits because of its large size. This helps to maintain even, soft lighting while the modifier can stay far out of frame. A strobe was mounted to a boom arm on the Zeppelin.

While I only used this one light, there are two things that I did to work it even more to my liking: first, there was a white V-flat (large white matteboard) to fill in shadows on the right side of the frame. This allowed me to have more control of the contrast through dodging and burning in post production. The second piece was a large 8' x 8' scrim (thin translucent fabric stretched on a frame) that help to soften the light even further.

The light in this image looks like large, natural light from a window. The combination of black curtains over the windows, a low ISO of 125, aperture of f/4 and shutter speed of 1/250th of a second ensured that no natural light would interfere with the frame. While natural light can look pleasing, I wanted absolute control of the light. The strobe and Zeppelin did not let me down in the slightest.

These images were processed in Capture One Pro 9 prior to being retouched in Photoshop CC. Retouching consisted of skin healing, tone matching to even out skintones/makeup, and dodging and burning to adjust contrast and accentuate features. A black and white adjustment layer with red and yellow channels adjusted was added as the last step.

This article is courtesy of Columbus, Ohio photographer Spencer Lookabaugh and was originally published on Midwest Photo Exchange’s blog, MPEX Experience.