Shooting Portraits with Elimchrom 175 cm Octabox as back light and plain background

I have received a lot of requests to do a quick post of shooting portraits with a white background (backlight and plain ) and so have writing this post. FYI this might not be the text book way of achieving the result, but as long as it works for me and the client is happy, its fine :)

The Elinchrom 175 cm Octabox is one of the best for shooting portraits. the 175 cm is really large and gives soft, diffused lighting to the subject. 

in this quick post, i want to show u some examples where i have taken advantage of the large 175 cm size and used the elinchrom 175 octa as backlight and even as a plain white background

Set up 1 : using as plain background  - i have seen several photos online where the model has beautiful lighting wrapping all around to a nice white background. 

the image above showsthe basic set up for these kind of photos. 

• the model was a good 8 to 10 feet away from the 175 octa
• the octa was used as a white background only (no power)
• 2 regular soft boxes powered by 2 600 RT flash was used, one kept to give lighting to the front of the model and one kept behind to give nice rim lighting. 
• the third 600 RT flash was used as a trigger mounted on 1dx and 70-200 mm f 2.8 L IS II USM lens was used. (disabled firing from camera)

the final pics are seen below

exif - f 3.2 + 1/250 + iso 125

another improvisation is to remove the octabox while keeping the same set up. here i wanted to get the same lighting effect shooting at wide aperture while getting bokeh background. the set up is seen below

and the final result obtained

now the second set up where we use the elinchrom 175 octabox as back light. 

the set us is here

• the model was standing close to the octabox which was powered by the Elinchrom FRX 400 and for the fill light i used another FRX 400 with beauty dish. both were triggered using elinchrom skyport mounted on the 1dx. 

this is the result

i could have cropped the image to get the desired portrait, but instead i just decided to lower the octabox as seen here

and now the final results of the above set up
 exif - moderately narrow aperture of f 7.1 + 1/125 + iso 125

a simple side by side review can tell u the image on the left below has more shadows and gives a dramatic effect using 2 lights with 175 octa as plain background while the image on below right is 175 octa as backlight with beauty dish to fill in front of model gives nice lighting all around.

so its up to you the photographer to decide which u prefer to shoot as both are pretty good in my opinion :)

cheers and happy clicking