How to make Skinny guys look bigger without Photoshop . . . Proper Lighting Technique

Proper lighting reveals or hides texture and is a key tool in portrait photography.  If you aim to hide texture like old cracky life-worn skin, position your lights so the angle of the light is more in line with the barrel of your lens.  The light will "fill in" the cracks.  If you aim to reveal texture and add depth and dimension, move your lights more to the sides of your subject.  By doing this you will reveal more of the subtle nuances of the subjects body structure.  Use this as a tool to make muscles look bigger, or fat rolls look smaller.

Specs:

D300 w/35mm prime
ISO 160
1/100 sec
f/16
Novatron Studio Lights

Levels and Saturation in Lightroom

Skinny Dude

This photo is a piss poor example of "rim lighting" where you would position the lights to the sides, and sometimes even slightly behind your subject which creates deeper shadows off the curvature of a skinny dude.  The set up is simple, one light on each side of the "un-talent".  One pointed directly at the white paper background.  Here I used shoot through umbrellas instead of soft boxes.  For even harder light, blast without any diffusion.

Here is a picture of the setup:

What you can't see from the setup pic is the third light actually hanging from the rafter pointing directly un-diffused onto the background paper.

Additional tip . . . if you don't have the luxury of actual talent due to a time crunch or depth of pocketbook and are forced to play double duty, photographer and model, use an intervalometer!  Some cameras (like the D300) have this integrated, if yours does not, you can get cable releases with this functionality.  It allows for you to set the camera to take a series of shots at specific intervals automatically.  I set mine up to take 20 shots 10 seconds apart.  Also, set your camera then for continuous focus so it will adjust as you move around if you are working in really confined spaces like above.

words . . .