Rembrandt's Woman in a Doorway
For recreating this painting, I found that the only light that I had to concern myself with was the key light. Being a painting using chiaroscuro, a back light made no sense, and in this painting, there is no fill light to soften the shadows; this left me with just the key light. One of the issues I found with setting up the key light was getting it high enough to create all of the right shadows. I also found that I couldn't find a light dim enough. In the end I found a light and got it to a position that gave me what I wanted. The key light was placed to the right of the camera, beside the model, slightly above head level.
I found more issues organizing models than the lighting. Originally I was debating between recreating two different Baroque paintings. Woman in a Doorway, and Portrait of his son Titus dressed as a monk. Both of which I had a different model in mind for. However, when it came to taking the photographs both of them were sick. In the end there was a scramble and I was able to find another model which allowed me finish this photograph. Complications that came with an unplanned model included having to change her hair colour, something that was fixed through Photoshop.
