Janni goes graphic (Patreon)

This is an old set of Janni from 2014.

I've been shooting with Janni quite a few times and have used her on a couple of my workshops as she is super sweet and easy to work with, and of course, have a beautiful body.

The first image is created using a classic advertising technique to make models stand out. 

Inexplicably Amazon was granted a patent for this technique in 2014 although photographers have been using it for years and years. I learned it by a photographer I worked for in 1989. Anyway, I only mention this as they have sort of made a usable schematic that perhaps makes it easier to visualize.

You set up a white backdrop and pull out the paper some 3m/9' or so. Ideally, you then create a little platform at the end elevated 25cm/10" or so. On the platform, you place a white acrylic plate. 

Then you light the background ideally with two mid-size umbrellas or 2 V-flats making sure no light will spill or reflect on the model, but all the paper is evenly illuminated. The area around the background must be dark to create good contour lines on the model. If it's a huge white area the contours of the model will be flat and fading into the background.

The light illuminating the background should normally be overexposed by around 1/2 -2/3 F-stop compared with the aperture you shoot at so make sure it goes white.

When you place a model on the white acrylic the highly reflective surface will reflect the white on the background regardless of whether there is light on the acrylic or not, and you will get a reflection. Depending on light and exposure you may also get a little shadow from your key light.

The second and third image is shot the same way, only the direct lamp was replaced with a medium umbrella.

The light on the model here is a 42cm Fresnel spot some 4-5m/12-18' away, but it could have been just a direct light, that was flagged off so it would not spill on the background which would cause it to overexpose. And since the model has oil on the body I have specular highlights in the skin which makes it possible to underexpose somewhat which hive the very fine skin details.

On image 4-5-6 I removed the key light and added some really big foam core/V-flat boards on either side of the model to reflect the backlight gently on the side of the model. Balance is everything here. The reflectors need to be from the side so the light has the impression of coming from the same direction. A reflector from the camera would just make things flat.

On 7-8 I removed the v-flats and only use backlit light. I added a couple of black foam core boards right next to the camera to ensure contrast.

And on 9 everything is similar except I allowed the umbrella on the left that illuminated the background to spill onto the models back.

When doing things like this it's important to try to create some strong graphical elements. Since there is no background there is no dimension and thus no depth. So you need something that will capture the attention to make images like this that will work.

I only have 2 BTS images from this shoot showing Janni with some hair extension - and a little bit of the scene in the background. You can see the umbrellas and foam core flags I'm using.