Martin Schoeller is one of the photographs I've been looking at for my portrait shoot. From reading a few interviews, looking at his images and watching a video of him in the studio i have managed to create a lighting diagram of his "female bodybuilders" series. I also had a guess at how he took his celebrity portraits.
First of all to achieve such high detail in his shots he uses a large format film camera. The main lights are two strip softboxes left and right of the model, a strobe pointing down just above the brow line and then another point up at the model. You can clearly see the catch lights of these in his images. A beuty dish on a boom stand is then used as a hair light and two strobes with gels are used to light the backdrop. They may also be two extra strobes he uses as fill light for the whole body but im not entirely sure.This is a very complex setup that uses seven lights which i doubt i will be able to use, but I plan on using some things the same way he does.
