Diana Magor, MPSA, APSA
April 2026 - Halloween witch
Original
About the Image(s)
This was taken during a portrait session at our club. One of our members dressed up in Halloween clothing, wore a wig and used white pancake makeup. She looked fantastic.
I didn’t get my exposure right with the lights, so I’ve had to up the exposure initially and then I used the various sliders to tweak the darks, shadows and highlights . I used a vignette in Lr to darken the corners.
The lighting set up was 2 flash units, one at roughly 45 degrees on the right and one low down on the left to put a bit of light on the background and the left side of the face. We were working in a dark room and I had forgotten my monopod which means that despite the flash, the image is a bit soft. I have sharpened it in Lr, which has also increased the lines on her face which were already picked up by the make up.
I felt she was very brave to come like that. Brian and I simply dressed up in our steampunk gear. It was a super evening with about 15 members there, of whom 6 dressed up and one brought her Grand daughter so it wasn’t all old models! We don’t run portrait nights very often so we aren’t good with the lights. We tried with and without reflector umbrellas to soften the flash but we really should practise more often.
11 comments posted
Or one of the witches?
Great costume and acting by your member friend. That surely makes the image, although it is not so sharp.
I think the lighting is OK, but more dramatic noir lighting might have been a good experiment.
But what happened to your taste for strong contrast? Posted: 04/03/2026 20:28:02
(Aside, as an explanation for the rest of the group, I used to live a short drive from Diana, but only came to know after I left England to come back to India, was too busy with my career as a doctor then to engage in club photography.)
I am not good at studio lighting, but one of the things they do is put a small ligh behind the model, which gives a gentle rim around the models head, might have added to the atmosphere. If you are doing it again, might be worth trying.
Coming back to the image here, I might have tried changing the contrast, also the elbow on the left is cut, and a different crop keeping this may be worth trying (if you have room in your original. Posted: 04/03/2026 23:29:36
I selected the background and darkened it, and then used the dodge tool to lighten the head piece to separate it from the background. I used the burn tool to darken her hands.
I made her face a bit lighter when I converted to mono in Photoshop.
Posted: 04/04/2026 14:18:31
