Nourah – Japanorama Studio Session, Aug 1st

Had a studio session on Saturday that I’ve been looking forward to for ages.  I was lucky enough to get a hold of professional belly dance instructor and dancer Nourah, who is seriously amazing to see perform. I’ve been privileged to work with Nourah before, but this is the first time I’ve gotten her into a studio to myself, and to her credit she just looked amazing in front of the camera. Many thanks to Justin and Alex for coming along and another special thanks to Justin for lending his SB900.

Here are some of the shots:

Did this with three lights – 1 SB900 in a snoot pointed at her face from camera left 1/32 power, 1 SB800 bounced into a reflector for fill from the lens axis at 1/8 power, and 1 red-gelled SB-900 behind the sheer piece of fabric at 1/2 power.  1/250 sec at f6.3, though that might have changed as we fiddled around with things.

These shots are some of my favourites from the session.  Used a 24″ Apollo softbox to camera right and behind Nourah, and another strobe fired through a diffuser on camera left to edge out her contours.  1/250 sec, f4.5, I forgot the power settings on the strobes.

SB800 into 60″ Westcott umbrella at 1/4 power camera left, SB900 into Apollo softbox coming in behing Nourah’s shoulder camera right.  I might do a series on just twirling fabric soon.  Amazing stuff.

Think I missed the focus on the eyes here – whoops.  Classic beauty light setup – softbox very close to face above camera, and an SB900 into a reflector positioned just below her face.

Sometimes the simplest setups work the best.  This is just one Nikon SB900 fired bare through a Lastolite diffusor , which gives a bit of a beauty-dish effect.  Beautiful.

For this last series of shots we zoomed a Nikon SB900 out to 200mm and boomed it out to hit the curtains in the background from camera right.  We let the spill from that flash light up Nourah and then filled in from camera right with another strobe fired through a Lastolite diffusor.  Simple stuff, but pretty effective.

Check back to Japanorama.co.uk for details of when we will be doing the next one!  Looking forward to it heaps. For the time being though, will be jetting off to Australia, so might not have time to blog.

Stay tuned.