Settings
In photography, there are two basic settings:
Since it's much more likely that you'll be shooting on location than in a studio setting, we'll address that first.
Once you start thinking about photographing costumes, you'll want to start keeping an eye out for good photo locations. In the movie business, there are people who do nothing but this, called location scouts. Unless you can afford to hire a location scout, you'll have to enlist your friends and yourself to do it.
A good location has the following characteristics:
For photographing historic costumes, it's even nicer if it lacks any cues pointing to the 21st century.
Some of the photos I've taken of Margo were done in a semi-public park -- it's privately owned, but the owners keep it open to the public. This lovely setting has a stream and waterfall, leading to an old mill-wheel that still turns from the force of the water. In addition, there's a bridge with a wrought-iron railing and gate, leading to a secluded garden.
If you're lucky enough to find a location like that, use it. If not, scout around public parks and gardens. Scope out your friends' backyards. Take a drive in the country -- look for stone fences, hedges, meadows, anything that looks nice. Often churchyards have gardens, and a big stone church isn't bad for a background, either. I've also taken costume photos in a public library, posing the subjects against a nice marble wall. (I actually had to have them stand just so, because there was an electric outlet on the wall that they needed to conceal!)
Don't overlook public fairgrounds. Our local fairgrounds have a lovely arbor, covered with flowers at the back, where we put the Queen and her entourage when we did our Renaissance Mayfaire. It was beautiful.
Once you've found a location (and have secured permission if it's private property), you might want to come back at different times of day to check the quality of the light. Morning light can look different from afternoon or evening light, and different parts of the location will be in shadow. A morning fog can create a dreamy quality, if you happen to get it -- but dew on the grass can dampen the hemline visibly.
Be very aware of the ground surface. Is it grassy? Dusty? Muddy? If you can't avoid a dusty or muddy location (and you should avoid it if you can), get the full-body shots and any low details first, before the costume can get dirty. Once that's done, you can concentrate on upper-body shots.
Avoid settings with tall grass or weeds -- it's no fun to pick burrs or vegetable fluff from a costume, and the costume certainly wouldn't look its best photographed with these things sticking to it.
Of course, in any public location, you might have to deal with the public. When this comes up, be polite, and have a little fun with it. They're probably asking questions because you're interesting, and they don't usually see that sort of thing. Don't be sarcastic or rude, unless they're genuinely interfering with the shoot -- you never know who you're talking to. They might be plainclothes cops. They might be an SCA duke and duchess, having just moved to your town. They might be looking for a costumer's guild or Renaissance Faire group. They might be movie producers looking to cast their next Shakespearian masterpiece. (They probably aren't, but be nice anyway.)
Sometimes you'll find possible locations where you least expect them: at a theme restaurant, for instance, or a big stone fireplace in a hotel lobby. (If you're lucky, the management might like the interest you create -- we were once sent a platter of appetizers on the house simply because we showed up in costume!) A beach can work, as long as there are no surfers or modern boats in the background.
Do you, or a friend, own a horse? Milady might look quite fetching on a fine white Arabian; Milord even more so. Of course, there's a problem if the tack doesn't look right. If Milady is sitting on a Western saddle, with its big horn on the swell, she might as well be wearing cowboy boots.
And there's one more category of location to consider: historic reenactment events, such as SCA tourneys or Renaissance Faires. In these locations, you have a wealth of pavilions, booths, and other nice-looking things to use as backdrops -- but you also have crowds. Renaissance Faires generally have lots and lots of mundanely dressed public wandering around, and it's difficult to set up a good photo shoot without someone walking through it. In addition, your costume will command less respect there -- a real consideration when you're trying to shoot twenty, or fifty, good pictures.
SCA events have a lot less of the mundanely-clad public wandering through, but they have drawbacks of their own. For one thing, the venues aren't usually chosen for their photogenic qualities, but more because the autocrat was able to reserve them. For another, the SCA's thousand-year period is very broad, and an Elizabethan couple would look a little out of place in front of a Viking-style tent. You can find good shots, but it might not be easy.
Probably the best bet from these choices would be at a Renaissance Faire early in the morning, before it's open to the public. Assuming you can get in, you have the setting, the buildings and booths, without the crowds. Anyone who wanders through has a fair chance of wearing a costume that matches the period.
But remember: We can't publish photos recognizably showing other people without their permission. Try to make it just one person in the picture.
If all else fails, find a nice backyard with a high fence and some flowers. It's not exotic, but it can be effective -- even beautiful.
As I mentioned above, a studio can be any indoor location with carefully controlled light. Most professionals try to get a location with a big, northward-facing window, so they can benefit from indirect sunlight. The big window will be fitted with opaque shades or curtains, allowing complete blackout when they want it. High ceilings are preferred, because 1) they stay out of your photos, and 2) they allow a lot of flexibility in lighting setups.
Across from the big window you have your backdrop -- either something period-looking (a stone fireplace, or a nice tapestry, for instance) or something plain -- like seamless paper. A plain white wall works, if you can't do anything else.
A note on backgrounds: You've seen the studio photos, like publicity stills for movies, in which the background is totally plain -- no corners, no edges, no way to tell where the wall ends and the floor begins. There are two ways this is achieved.
The first, the expensive way, is by using a cyclorama. This is an area, or a room, in which all corners are rounded to a large radius, including where the wall meets the floor. The entire surface is then painted flat white. Lights are mounted near the high ceiling, and gels -- colored filters of acetate or mylar -- are used to color the background without shining on the subject. Sometimes a slide will be projected to create the illusion of another place.
Not everybody -- not even every pro photographer -- has the luxury of a cyclorama. So they use the next best thing: a roll of seamless paper, usually a light neutral grey. This is a standard device of the photographic industry -- hung from a roll near the ceiling, the seamless paper, up to twelve feet wide, is rolled down and then forward onto the floor, as far forward as the camera can see -- no corners that way. The subject then stands on the paper, which again is illuminated by colored lights if desired, and the photographer starts shooting. When the shoot is over, the part of the paper that was damaged by being walked on is cut off. The rest is rolled up again for next time.
Unless you're really serious about photography, you probably don't have a roll of seamless paper. But you might very well have a nice, high-ceilinged room, or have access to one. If you can't scare up a tapestry, a simple cloth hanging in a neutral color can substitute -- and I know costumers generally have cloth on hand! (Try to avoid prints or brocades for this, because the pattern makes a distracting background.)
You probably also don't have photofloods, the white-balanced lamps on tripods that put out carefully controlled levels of light. There's a substitute for them, too: go to a hardware store and look for the tripod-mounted halogen work lights. The tripods can extend very high -- up to eight feet or so -- and many of the lights put out 500 watts of brilliant light (a little yellowish, but better than household incandescents). Try to get at least two -- they're not too expensive. (Of course, if you can borrow them, that's even better.) If you want to get really fancy, and you're handy with tools and electrical stuff, you can install a rheostat in one. This is simply a dimmer switch, the kind used for mood lighting in rooms, but make sure it's rated for the wattage of the lamps you're getting. The rheostat can actually fit inside the housing of the lamp -- I've done it -- but you'll want to drill cooling holes in the housing, because it gets very hot.
If that's too much trouble, mount a 200-watt bulb in a clip light (not the kind that says not to use more than 100-watt bulbs!) or a lamp, and use that for your fill light.
Once you're done, you can have a 500 watt main light, and a variable fill light, to be set at different heights on opposite sides of the camera. Now, if you set up a backlight, shining on the background behind the subject, and maybe a halo light (aimed at the back of her head, to cast a "halo" on her hair), you have a lighting setup capable of taking very professional-looking pictures.
You may notice that professional photographers don't use these 500-watt halogen lights. They use photofloods and flashes, which only reach full intensity for a thousandth of a second or so. When you think about it -- two or three 500-watt lamps, pouring out energy -- and you compare it with the thousand or so watts your microwave oven outputs, it's easy to see why. Those lamps get hot, and what they shine on gets hot. You'll want to make your photo shoot as quick as you can (without rushing), or do it with fans on and rest periods with the lamps off. Remember to be careful touching them -- they can raise blisters easily if you touch the wrong part. (Also, be careful about overloading your electrical system -- tripped circuit breakers will leave you in the dark, and burning buildings give very poorly controlled lighting.)
That's the price of low-cost improvisation -- but it does work.
If you don't want to get that involved, you can simply array a number of clip lights aimed at the subject. Again, put at least one on each side, and one behind her to erase her shadows from the backdrop. You won't have the total amount of light the halogen setup offers, but you'll have enough.
In each case, remember to have at least the primary (or brightest) light shining down on the subject, from ahead and above, usually to one side. If the lights are at, or even near, her eye-level, I guarantee she'll squint. If they're below eye level, you get the horror-movie shadows on the face -- not very flattering.
It's also a good idea to have at least one powerful but diffused light to soften shadows. Time for the white board again -- aim your fill light at it, and have your assistant reflect it at the subject. This one can be near eye level, to fill the shadows, because it's (hopefully) diffused enough that she won't squint -- at least, not when she's not looking directly at it.
One more tip: When setting up your lighting, put a dress form in the place where the costume is to be photographed. Not a dress form wearing the costume, but one in a neutral grey or beige cloth -- preferably its "natural" cover, with no wrinkles or ripples.
Then get over to the camera's area and look carefully at how the light is hitting the dress form. Look for "hot spots," where the light is visibly more intense, or "cold spots," where it's dimmer. If you see any such spots, try rearranging the lights to even it out. Reflecting the light off a white board or white ceiling will help diffuse it, if you can. Still, there's a chance you'll get hot spots you can't eliminate. In that case, don't worry too much about it. You're not using professional photofloods, with their barndoors, umbrellas, and diffusers, and you're still doing pretty well -- chances are nobody will complain.
So, in your homemade studio: shoot your photos, quickly if the heat is a problem, and get ready to color-correct them in your photo editing software, because you're going to need to.
Of course, if you got that northward-facing window, with good, indirect sunlight, you'll be much happier. You can shoot forever with minimal additional lighting, and the sunlight is nicely color-balanced. It's tough to improve on sunlight.