Shooting indoors can be tricky if you don't know how to master light properly; small light bulbs and flash lights can be your best friends if you don't have expensive equipment or if you cannot use it in certain conditions, especially during a warm summer day.

After shooting outdoors with Tania, we wanted to do some indoor photography for her lingerie portfolio but at the same time i wanted to have some warm looking photos, which is an effect that you usually achieve when you shoot outdoors so in other words i had to come up with some ideas. Rather than the usual flashes that i use on my shoots, i decided to bring continous lights - which have the drawback that they make lots of heat (depending by the models) so be careful with those! After checking out a good spot at the villa, we decided to shoot in the lounge and in the balcony as well.

I picked from my lights a 2x500W bulbs and i set them in a classic 90° degree setup and i bounced their light over 2x80cm umbrellas (used in backreflection) and this way i managed to have softer light on my model. Make sure that you don't put direct light on the model with lights as powerful as these! If you use direct light, you will have more power, also more hard light but the biggest issue is that your model will be naturally blind. Be careful!

Like for outdoors shooting, where sun always change direction and moves constantly, when you shoot indoors, you have to be careful and be constantly focused on your model's face since the models also move, you know, and what is most important to notice is where shadows are changing. Remember to keep an eye on your camera's LCD screen and if you want to be double sure, it's always useful to have with you a laptop/netbook for checking out if you're on the good path or if it's better to change something, move your lights, add one more reflector and so on. The good thing about digital photography is that you can see on the fly if you're good or not, remember that! If you have a bit more knowledge, another suggestion is to keep an eye on the histogram, especially during the first shots where you are setting up your settings.

When you move lights, shadows change dramatically so like i said a moment ago, move them until you find a setting that you like. Since i wanted to spice things up a little bit, i have mixed a little bit of flash with my Nikon SB-600 mastered by my Nikon D3x since i wanted to have some fill light, because some of the areas on the model's face where not properly lit. For finishing it up, i have used a small light bulb that i found on the side, really by chance, for warming up my model's face a little bit more. This is yet another "trick", since when you are shooting indoors you can't use the reflector and bounce sun light, well in theory you can do it bouncing light from your main light source but it can become complicated, so if you are indoors you can check if there is a small lamp that you can put on the side, maybe bounce it over the wall, and then you can easily warm a bit your model's face with a simple setup, even better....if you have an assistant make him hold the light!

By Gabrio Linari. Thursday July 8th, 2010. Do you want to do a creative lights setup? Ask me how!