Build your own art nude posing box with insulating sheets

This setup creates a big hi-key box for the model to work in. The box serves two purposes.

Firstly, the lighting part. By surrounding the model by white reflectors and pushing light into both ends of the box we create a very soft wrap-around light with almost no shadows.

Secondly, and more importantly, the space gives the model something to work in. The box is deliberately claustrophobic. I've used this setup many times and it always puts the models into a similar state of mind.

They want to curl up in it, somehow it makes them feel a little vulnerable. I have to coax them into pulling bigger shapes.

Of course in the shoot both emotions work, but when working those larger, space-filling shapes you want the model typically reaching to the corners or centres of the wall - this helps exaggerate the sense of the box.

Post processing for this includes using the transform tool to make sure the box "entrance" is properly square - if it is slightly out this becomes very obvious in the final image.

Once you have setup a working space, don't be afraid to explore different ways of using the space. By moving Carla to a lying down pose, where she is bathed in that lovely soft light it is possible to make some gorgeous hi-key pastel toned portraits and figure work that ignores the "box" aspect entirely.

 

key points

The posing environment you give the model often influences the way the model poses - you should work with it, let the model "act" into the space.

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