Shadows Define - Maternity

Getting light on your subject is easy. All you have to do is get some kind of light, hotshoe flash, studio monolights, garage shop flood lights, the sun, etc, etc. Light lets us see the subject, but it is the shadows that define the thing we are looking at.

Suzi here is about 8 months pregnant. Her belly sticks right out. There is no sag to her mommy belly. In this photo, I have the light even with her to camera left, and a second softbox camera right and a little in front of her. I wanted the light to wrap around her to give definition to her curves. Unfortunately, this also made a deep shadow at the bottom of the right side of her belly, making it seem as if the tummy sagged.

















I adjusted the two 36"x36" softboxes to wrap around her a bit more from the front to throw a little more light onto her right side. It helped a little. But the shadow there still seemed to say "sag" which is not what we wanted for this mom.

So, I had my assistant hold a piece of white foam core board just above her knee. That bounced enough light up into the shadow area to reveal just how firm her maternal belly was. That is all it took. Two softboxes and a piece of foam core board.

One other thing we did to hide the shadow, was to place her hand just above her pocket. This gives a sense of place and distracts us from the shadow because now something is there.

We did not take all the shadow away. If we had done that, then her belly would just seem like a big round flesh colored blob with no form or tone. So make sure you pay attention to your shadows. Where are they? How heavy are they? Would you change the shadows and why?