My subject here is utilizing items that represent her dad. He had a long military career and now he is delving into art. So she’s wearing his military jacket, a military helmet, holding his paint brush and a canvas, and is standing next to a military ammo box full of the rest of his paint brushes. We quietly borrowed a few items around her house for this session. We started off and slowly adjusted the poses until we ended with two looks we liked.
For setup, I had one light overhead with no mods, I also had an octobox as the key light just off to the front of her and a long box just off to the side to add a little fill light.
The final two photos are once again my stand in. Instead of measuring the subject I just had her stand next to an extra light stand and made it her height. This allowed me to set up the lights to her height and then I got the stuffed bunny stand in on top and just like that the light test dummy is good to go. I started with getting the light over head on the boom stand up and then added the other lights (then I strung the cord overhead and out of sight).
I suppose this is as good a time as any to mention to keep safety in mind. I can have cords hanging from the ceiling when I am photographing a stuffed animal stand in. However, you want to have those cords organized by the time you have a live subject in front of your camera. It just isn’t safe to have cords all over and it makes you look unprofessional if you do have them out. You don’t want someone tripping on a cord and taking the whole set with them.