Vitastic – Accentuating a great body shape

This post is also available in: Dutch

Vitastic is a brand new Dutch blog about a good and healthy lifestyle. It helps you to maintain a great body shape and teaches you how to take care of yourself. A blog is nothing without graphical content, so Vitastic’s Linda came to me with a nice and quite special request: using the light to accentuate her body shape.
Of course, I love shaping the light. And everybody knows I really love the Elinchrom light modifiers: they let me shape the light exactly like I want. So we had a deal.

Linda (1/200s at f/2.8 on 50mm) – Studio Hans van Eijsden Photogra, Zwolle, Netherlands

For Vitastic we wanted to create several different images with different looks using different techniques. First of
all, just the simple casual shots. Portraits with sun through the hair, light skin, happiness. And then, the more surrealistic sport shots.
On the left you see a (simple) light setup. I used one Elinchrom ELB 400 pack with two Pro heads and a 10m extension cable. The key light on the right was in the A port (66%) and has just the default Quadra dish with diffuser on it. It gives a quite broad beam of light. The rim light on the left was in the B port (33%) and has the beautiful Elinchrom Maxi Spot on it. This gives a more contrasty and edgy character to the rim light and because of the high efficiency of the Maxi Spot, the light output measured exactly the same on both. Yay!
The Maxi Spot is nice, although it has a little bit of a double shadow sometimes. This, because of the direct light mixed with the reflected light and they both reach the subject through another angle. I solved this problem by inserting a silver deflector into the Maxi Spot. This deflector blocks the direct light and reflects the light back into the Maxi Spot. It gave 1/3 stop light loss (not much) but it made the Maxi Spot acting like a strong contrasty beauty dish without double shadows and without a really hot spot. Exactly what was needed here for Vitastic.

Take a look again on the image above and the slider above this post. As you can see, I overpowered the sun by under exposing for the ambient light. Then I added a circular polarizer in front of the lens, to turn the sky to a deep blue tone. I was approx. 2 stops under exposed and then I took my Sekonic light meter and measured the Elinchrom lights. This way, they had the perfect exposure on Linda.

Her skin was pretty flawless and by using this type of light in these positions, her legs and arms came out pretty soft but contrasty. That was the 3D look we were looking for and it was really fun to do. And as a bonus, to see these results immediately on the back of the camera (I didn’t shoot tethered here) was a real drive to make more of these images.

Check out Vitastic if you can read Dutch and come back soon for more!