First time in the studio - 06.10.2011

We were taken into the studio - my first time ever - and shown the equipment available i.e soft light, hard light, ight covers, bulbs, backgrounds, cables, cones to mention just a few!  We were also told all the relevant health and safety.
I took photos of the session with my own camera to blog it on here.  I used my camera in auto as I couldn't get my head round how to use ISO/Aperture/Shutter Speed in manual on my camera.  I did try and ended up with black photos! (and also deleted all the photos I had taken by mistake!)

We were asked to take portrait shots of each other using one light, to light the shot.
These are some of the shots I took.  When I seemed to get the settings somewhere close to what was giving an acceptable picture I noticed that the hat was casting shadows over the eyes and I wondered how to overcome this - Steve was called in to advise how to resolve this......

He added another light from a different angle which meant we had to change the settings again on the camera.  Two lights now to contend with and I hadn't mastered one!  

After much deliberation the settings were changed and here are the results.

While we had both lights we decided to continue with the challenge of shadow so Stuart volunteered (arm tightly up his back) to sit while we carried on trying to understand using studio lighting.

Stuart put his hood up to create a shadow round his face.  After a few shots and subsequent adjustments we seemed to have got his face out of shadow but now had washed out the colour of his hoodie - more complications!  A few more adjustments later and we had cracked it - well as far as we could go at the moment with out limited knowledge :-).

While taking part in the studio session it made me realise just how difficult it is, working with lights and backgrounds etc.  I personally felt too restricted with having the camera fixed on the tripod as I enjoy taking photos from different angles and aspects but it is an area that I would like to look at more.