Is the nose shadow dead?

Funny you should mention that. I'm taking a course on portraiture right now and they're really getting into how to properly light the subject. I'm looking at the texts and I'm looking at ANY fashion magazine or add or any portrait these days and I'm not seeing that shadow with little light triangle under the eye.

I think we're into an era where it's not detail you want, it's instant recognition. So we add allot of fill to show the full model's face or features of what ever. But the classical techniques never die. It'll come back.

Lighting is all about controlling the shadows, highlights reveal - shadows define, once you have the correct exposure the highlights look after themselves.

With lighting size matters, by which I mean a large soft-box, diffuser or even a large window will always give you softer edged, more subtle shadows with less contrast between fully lit and shadow areas. The further the light source is away from the subject, the smaller it appears to the subject, the harder the edges of the shadows will be, which is why you see the huge soft-boxes used close to the subject in Pro studios and why studios need to be large.

The angle of the light source relative to the camera determines the length of the shadows, all the way from zero (no shadows at all), with the light source from the camera position, to longer than the subject, with the light source at 90° to the subject.

To hide skin defects you use the former, to get maximum texture you use the latter, usually somewhere in between is good, Rembrandt Lighting, the basis for all lighting, uses around 45° left or right on the horizontal and around 20° - 40° above the eye line.

Shadows carry as much information as the highlights, they define the edges, they make the image 3D, make it 'pop'. I think that some of the fashion for shadowless lighting (lighting definitely goes in 'fashions') is because some photographers these days don't know the mechanics of lighting and most use small High Street or Shopping Mall studios which severely limits their scope for good lighting. Imagine an 8ft octagon soft-box above the subject, you need height to use them.

Look at some of the Studio images of film stars from the 30's through to the 60's and you'll see the 'butterfly' under the nose because the 'fashion' at the time was for Paramount Lighting, also called 'Oyster' or 'Butterfly' lighting with a large soft-box above and in front of the subject and one below and in front (like two oyster shells, hence the name), this gives beautiful 'glowing' skin, but the tell-tale 'butterfly' shadow under the nose. The smaller the soft-boxes used the more defined this shadow is.

Chris

I prefer some fill - I try to have the subject hold a card just out of frame to fill the shadows under the nose and chin. A side shadow can look very good, done correctly.

Is it dead? All things go around, then come around.

Unfortunately there aren't many options. If you lavish attention on poor Rambo, you may accidentally teach him some undesirable behavior (acting out to get attention). So try to pay lots of attention and play with him when he's not meowing. If he doesn't recover in a week or so, it might be time to consider getting another cat. I say this, though it did not work in my own personal experience. When we tried to cheer up our grieving cat with a kitten, he did not accept it at all. But it -is- what our vet suggested. The bright side is that the kitten was resilient and didn't care that the older cat was grumpy and sometimes aggressive. We ended up putting our cat on kitty prozac, BUT he had a history of anxiety and behavioural problems. If your cat got along well with the other cat, there's no reason to believe getting a new companion won't work.

Don't stick my nose into too many photo shoots, but composition is composition, leave out the boogers.

http://flic.kr/p/ezgX7s