We did a workshop in the bus shed's which gave us an opportunity to use studio lighting outside of the studio. We were split into groups and left to experiment as team.
I've found in this module I haven't enjoyed working within teams. I understand that, in general, the photography industry is very competitive and that competition is sometimes good motivation to improve yourself, however I've found within the class those who step-up and show initiative are often met with hostilities or sly comments. Sometimes those have been appointed to lead a group set off to do their own thing and simply expect the group the follow leaving it up to them to involve themselves.
In this instance, our group were simply taken turns going in rotation and allowing each person to take lead upon their turn. Later into the shoot April was appointed to lead the group and asked what each person would like to do and organised others to set-up and arrange, similar to what we were doing before.
I chose my location within the bus shed, the stairs, arranged the light to roughly how I'd like it and asked Gary to model for me. With the help of the group, I asked Nicola to meter the light while April held on to the boom for safety and was ready to raise, lower or move the light if needed.
I took several shots until I was happy with the variety of poses and then we rotated and Nicola shot.
When we circled back around to my turn to shoot, we set up to shoot April as the model where I took these 2 initial shots.
Test shot. Flat lighting, boring and bland.
Side lighting, more interesting however location is bad.
After taking just these 2 shots I received some feedback which felt more like criticism than constructive criticism which I found demotivated me particularly as I felt I was seeing others receiving constructive criticism.
The location I wanted meant I would be in another groups shot so I asked if I could quickly have 5 minutes to try in the location.
I liked the image but found I wanted the light higher, as you can see from the image the ceiling was fairly low and due to the rather large softbox, the light couldn't be raised further than this.
I wanted to try to try and only light my chosen subject and leave the background in darkness, with such a large open space I thought the task would be easy. I felt I had an idea of how the light needed to be but found in trying to communicate the idea to the team and April as team leader, they were confused. This may have been down to bad communication or that my understanding was slightly ahead of there's.
I started to direct the team myself but was however shut down when we were asked if I had taken over as team leader now. I then had to re-communicate the idea to April who once she understood could direct the team.
Using the same set up as above but with a higher light in an open space I captured this image of Gary.
I've managed to create a big distance in exposure between Gary and the background however due to the size of the softbox then light is still spilling onto the background and the the large pool of light on the floor is reflecting up onto the wall behind gary.
Taking this idea further I had seen my team using the available equipment in the bus shed as props. I opted, in this shot, for a total top down lighting which would hopefully reduce the spill of light onto the background and create very dramatic lighting.
I also opted to shoot wider than before to include the lighting set-up, something which Richy Leeson, in a recent workshop, noted is something a lot of commercial photographer are doing as of late.
However, the light is still spilling onto the background and the panel behind Gary is causing a distraction and looks as though it's coming out of his head.
Rather than change my angle as suggested, as I wanted to shoot parralell to Gary, I simply moved the set.
I love Gary away from the distracting panel behind him and found the highlights on the shutter behind him serve to separate him from the background. I also moved the cabling to produce a neater image with the result being an image in which I feel the lighting, styling, props and inclusion of the lighting set-up all work together well.