I was experimenting with some hot lights yesterday and would appreciate any suggestions you might have. Primarily I was using the lights on the backdrop with my flash (grid) bounced off ceiling. I'm not happy with this but I'm a little stumped. http://imagesbyceci.smugmug.com/photos/471157405_FTWng-M-1.jpg
you need to get him further away from the background for one...first thing i saw was lines etc on it.
Thanks. Good point. I rather ignored the wrinkles while playing with the lights. I had about 3' behind the person - would 5-6' work or are we talking 10+?
That would be either the Inverse Square Law; Love that term! "an object that is twice the distance from a point source of light will receive a quarter of the illumination" .. or use depth of field to blur the background, ie smaller aperture and/or more distance between subject and background.
if you get too narrow depth of field wise, you risk losing part of your subject. pulling them away from the background usually makes more sense. and that IS part of your lighting...so you can't really ignore it if you're trying to learn. why spend all kinds of time getting light how you like it on the subject, only to realize oh-shit....what am i going to do about this background...and then you try to change to fix it and realize you have to start all over again. light=photography. shortcuts or not worrying about the image as a whole usually only ends up being more frustrating.