Working with light

I've been doing more work with artificial light lately. This photo of Nathalie, my wife, was made in my improvised studio with three strobes. I simply like photographing my wife.

In this case, I was looking for high-key, fairly hard-light look. In post-production, I soften the look just slightly and open up the shadows on the right side of the frame.

The light setup: A strobe to the viewer's left was set above in a softbox umbrella at about half power (you can see the catchlight in her eyes). A strobe to the viewers right was lower and set to about one eighth power. A white background is illuminated with a flash at full power.

The camera setup: Canon 7D at ISO 400 and 1/125th. Canon 50m f/1.4 at  f/8. Most lens are great at f/8. The 50 1.4 is no exception. The lens is just as sharp at much wider apertures. The quickness and quietness of focusing is really useful for making photos like this.

Retouching: Basically, there was no retouching except this: The red channel was copied and pasted into a new layer. That layer was gaussian blurred at 10 pixels. Everything but the skin was erased in that layer and the layer was set to 20 percent opacity in luminosity blending mode. Sounds complicated, but actually very simple. Adds a subtle glow. There is no sharpening and no cloning, though I did extend the right side to make it a perfect square.