Creating a nightclub scene in the studio

The nightclub atmosphere for the photo of the singer below was put together in our studio using nothing more than some tungsten lights, a black background, some canned smoke, and a relatively easy Photoshop post-processing technique. We chose to use tungsten instead of strobes so the lighting would more closely mimic the lights of an actual music concert. Several small lights were set up in the background as stage lights. One 750w lamp was set off to the left rear to serve as a hair light. The main light was a 1000w lamp used directly with no softening from the front right. An assistant released canned smoke in the background to create atmosphere. At an ISO of 400 we were able to achieve a shutter speed of 1/640 second, more than sufficient to stop the action with just a touch of blur to make it look real. As a final touch in post processing a star burst image was added as a "screen" lay in Photoshop. This added some color and further hazed the image.

The model was moving very fast and tossing her hair. It takes a really good camera/lens combo to consistently follow the action and deliver sharply focused images at an aperture of f/2. I was using the Nikon D4 shooting at 10 frames per second with Nikon 85mm lens, a perfect combo.