What started as a simple lighting test to experiment with lighting angles, fabric textures and skin textures or muscle highlights ended up becoming a much more intense shoot than planned.  As you’ll see from the images below the fold, the look is intense, textured, detailed and appears to have a fairly complex lighting setup.

What i used, however, is anything but complex.  I used two speedlights inside 30 inch softboxes with radio slaves.  For most shots they were set to 1/8 power and set perpendicular to and about 6 inches from the wall and about 3 feet from the model.  They’re above the model’s head and tilted down to give a good wash of light over her body and still throw a soft hightligh on the wall.   Because they’re softboxes insted of grids, i got a good highlight on the chains and cloth as well.

I would have preferred either larger softboxes or stip boxes to give me a fully parallel light rather than the downward cast light I have now.  However, sofboxes large enough (72 or 80 inch would be perfect) would not have fit in the space we shot in and strip boxes that tall would have been almost as unwieldy and not given me the wash on the wall that I ended up liking very much.

The sescret to the complexity of the scenes is in the textures and contrast of the intricate cloth, the way it’s draped and the contrast with the wall behind it. The mix of hard chain with the soft silk of the cloth is mirrored in the intense textures in the model’s skin.  Even the smooth skin of the lower back has an unusually pronounced texture.

I’ve included a quick snap of the light and prop setup that shows the space we were shooting in (my bedroom, in this instance).  So jump into the comments and tell me how you’d shoot something like this or if this inspired you to shoot something, post it somewhere then come back here and etell us about it.

The images below are not safe for work.  The nudity is mostly implied, but it bondage and eroticism isn’t implied,  it’s right out in the open for anyone to seel.