flash

Katie Ambient + Flash

January 09, 2018 in Ambient & Flash

For this shoot I wanted to mix flash lighting with the ambient light of fairy lights.
I wanted the fairy lights to be thrown out of focus to create a bokeh effect white lighting Katie with the flash.

The problem I knew I would have is that the fairy lights are very low in power and as both model and I will be holding them, very prone to movement so slow shutter speeds would create motion blur.

To achieve a bokeh effect, I need as wide an aperture as possible, f/2.8 in this instance, and create distance from the subject to throw them out of focus as much as possible. I set a shutter speed of 1/100 which would let more ambient light in than my maximum sync speed but also reduce motion blur from the fairy lights. At f/2.8 and 1/100 shutter speed I needed an ISO of 500 to expose for the ambient light from the fairy lights.
I turned the room's lights off so only the fairy lights are creating ambient light and closed the blinds so the room was in total darkness.
I metered my strobe setting the light meter to ISO 500 and adjusted until the light exposed Katie at f/2.8. Here is the resulting image.

The like of bokeh balls look interesting however cross Katie's face.
You can also see how the flash, hitting the light in Katie's hand is overpowering them making it hard to tell they're lit up at all.

A few shots in I noticed the side Katie's hair is laying is blocking the light, in some instances it created interesting shadows, but others it cast her full face into shadow.

I tried changing the angle I was shooting from to see how an image can change without moving the light or subject.

I really like these images. The unused barn doors you can see in the background helps to give a sort of behind-the-scenes feel and the shadows cast on Katie's face don't seem to be ass problematic compared to shooting head on.

Wanting to try and eliminate big shadows from Katie's face, I moved the light to the other side of Katie to avoid hitting her hair. I also switched lens to a 105mm macro lens knowing longer focal lengths produce a shallower depth of field.

However I noticed a problem when shooting with a macro lens, particularly in the studio.
I remetered the lights to achieve a f/2.8 aperture. However, at close focusing distances, the circle of light that hits the cameras centers grows, meaning not 100% of the light going through the lens is exposing the sensor. Nikon cameras fortunately report the change in what is known at effective aperture. However, I didn't pick up on this change in effective aperture until I saw the metadata. This resulted in ever so slightly underexposed images. Not so much the images are unusable but enough for me to realise it's important to be careful in noting the aperture the camera is reporting.

Click here to see a gallery of all the images from this shoot.

The term bokeh refers to the way a lens renders light when thrown out of focus. It is typically seen are round globules in shallow depth of field images.

Alex Kitching

January 08, 2018 in Studio, Flash

Having shot with a model from Tyne Tees Models previously in ambient light, I wanted to try the same within the studio.

I wanted to try and light the full infinity cove as a whole to allow the model freedom to move around in the cove and during the shoot wanted to try several different styles of photography.

I wanted to try an ecommerce look, with simply a model on a white background at first however upon seeing the models test card I noticed he had a good physique with lots of definition.

I thought it would be an interesting challenge in lighting the model to emphasise his physique taking everything I had learned up to this point, expanding on it and experimenting.

April offered to lend a hand throughout the shoot which was appreciated due to the possible complexity.

Days before the shoot, I was in contact with Alex, the model to verify times and locations. I also let Alex know expectations and asked if he had anything particular in mind we could try also. I let him know I was looking for a e-commerce 'asos-style' shoot but also a fitness themed shoot. I made him aware I have never shot something like this to both keep his expectations in check and to make him aware I would be spending time doing trial and error with the lighting.

The day of shoot, before Alex's arrival I spent time setting up the studio, pre-metering lights which would light the studio, setting up computers and my camera and getting lights ready with any modifiers I may have to switch to, saving time later.

I confirmed again time and location and upon arrival we went through the clothes Alex had brought with him, what we would be doing and simply cracked on.

I put on some music to make Alex more comfortable, asked him to stand in the infinity cove and ask April to meter and adjust the lights until they exposed at f/8. I chose f/8 as it is a 'sweet spot' in most lense as the aperture that renders the sharpest.

I then took a test shot.

This test shot allowed me to evaluate light positioning, and with an image imported into Capture One I could quickly and lightly tone the image, adding contrast and warmth to his skin tone. An upside to tethering is that the model can see the images been taken, and often found, as Alex has modelled for quite some time, he was spotting his own mistakes. However, a downside is that Alex could also spot mistake I was making, adding some pressure to the situation. Particularly as it's my job to assess and control every aspect of the shoot.

Overall I was happy with the lighting, I move the softbox around slightly as I didn't want split lighting and though the background wasn't a 255 white as intended, I was okay with that for the time being.

I had noticed from previous shoots tethering, it's very easy to take a picture, look, take a picture, look. I don't shoot this way untethered so I made a conscious effort not to with this shoot. Luckily with Alex being fairly experienced he was able to keep up and change poses quickly with me giving some directions every now and then.

When shooting wider shots, was getting parts of the set in the shot, something I've been experimenting with a little since our workshop with Richy Leeson..
However, I noticed getting a full 255 white background was difficult due to shadows cast by Alex and the lights themselves. I could fix this in post however personally I found myself like the shadows, as it seeming gives a behind-the-scenes imperfect look. Though I would like to try this again so I can actually perfect getting a 255 background easily.

I could have moved Alex away from the background to reduce his shadow, however when shooting white, the depth of the infinity cove proved a problem as the white floor didn't seem to extend far enough out. Fine for headshots as you don't see the floor, but for full length images I found i struggled.

I then started to stop down the background lighting to give a grey background. The flexibility of a white background is that depending on exposure you can range from 255 white to total black. As the exposure stopped down, I asked Alex to change clothing as to not blend in with the background.

I rather like these headshots. The lighting changes slightly from a slight loop to butterfly which provides a flattering even lighting and the changes in pose allow for variety in house the light hits his face.

Moving on to physique type shots I start by simply lighting Alex with a softbox, high to the camera left point down. I knew this wouldn't give me the desired results but would provide me with a starting point.

The result is a very flat light, though some shadows are being cast they are very soft and filled in therefore the image lacks the depth and shape needed to emphasise Alex's physique.
In the last image, Alex is too far back in the cover and his also being lit by the barn doors so I had to be careful in where to position him. However is did give him more definition.

I decide to butterfly light Alex with a beauty dish (albeit i make-shift one as the college doesn't seem to own a bowens mount beauty dish); an idea I got from my research. The beauty dish would create a harder light that a softbox and more contrast. The top down nature of butterfly lighting would also allow add shadows cast by muscle definition.

At the same time I side lit Alex with 2 stip boxes and aslligned them so only the very edge of the striplights would light alex. This was to prevent light wrapping around him and filling in shadows, I wanted the light to simply glance the muscle.

I find the the contrast and positioning of the lights add definition however the beauty dish is highlighting the models face in an unflattering way giving him a shine.

Removing the beauty dish and roating the stip boxes to match his turned post resulted in very dramatic lighting that emphasised the definition in his body further as the beauty dish was no longer filling in the shadows.

However, depending on pose I've lost light on his face and as the stripboxes aren't in front of Alex there are no catchlights in his eyes which I find help to added some interest there.

Switching set-ups I went back to a simply 1 light set-up opting to use a softbox for its ability to spread light.

I asked Alex to sit on an armchair I borrowed from set design and placed the light above him facing directly down.

With the angle I asked alex to sit at the light should still create shadows around his muscles creating definition and the spill of light should mimic an almost spot like look casting a pool around him.

The resulting image lit alex well, however his brow bone cast shadows into his eyes and the light is a little too soft.

I decided to raise the softbox higher making it a smaller light source and therefore giving off a hard light.

Here the light is hard enough to cast shadows and I asked alex to lean his head back slightly on the cahri which allows light onto his eyes. another downside is the state of the infinity cove itself. There are a lot of scuff marks, which though can be edited out, take a very long amount of time to correct.

Overall I really like the outcome, I think the lighting flatter Alex and emphasises his physique well.

I wanted to try the same with a black background I moved the chair and Alex out of the cove.
I needed for the light to spill around alex and the chair but nothing else to underexpose the background enough to be black.

However the softbox spread the light too far and the room was not big enough. I tried to flag off the spill of light however the boards used are of very low quality, there are white edges to them, the black paint is more a grey. However there was a simpler fix, reducing the spill of light.

I swapped the softbox out for the beauty dish. The bowl shape of the dish directs the light into a more concentrated bowl.

You can still see the background however it is much improved and is dark enough to be worked out in post production.

A problem I had with the beauty dish was, to get a smaller pool of light, I had to move the light closer. Even on its lowest setting it metered at f/16. Being so close to the subject meant the light fall off would be greater.

In this image you can see the difference in exposure from Alex's forehead to his fingers.
This is due to the inverse square law. To try and put it simply, the closer the lightsource, the brighter. The intensity of the light is inversely proportional to the square of the distance.
The further away the lightsource, the lower its intensity. However, the difference in intensity (sometimes called light fall-off) reduces as the distance increases.

In this diagram, the yellow gradient represent light and it's intensity. We see the in light 'fall-off' the further it extends from the light source. However, we also see, the difference in intensity between points A and B is greater than the intensity between point C and D.

In the above image of Alex, if the size of the pool of light being cast didn't matter, I could have moved the light higher. This would have resulted in a lesser difference in exposurse between his head and hands.

Click here to see a gallery of all the images from this shoot

Warehouse Shoot in groups

January 08, 2018 in Flash

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.

Click here to see a gallery of all the images taken on this shoot

Building The Lights up

January 08, 2018 in Studio, Flash

I wanted to revisit my still life work of the Jack Daniel's bottle with studio lighting to see how it compares to ambient lighting with the same brief.

One of the advantages of studio lighting is the ability to have more than one light source, however controlling so many aspects of the image can be overwhelming and difficult to assess should the image not turn out as planned. I built the light set-up one light at a time.

I wanting to illuminate the liquid inside the bottle along with the label. I started with a snoot to be able to direct the light however I pulled the snoot back to enable a wider pool of light.

I noticed the angle of the isn't illuminating the liquid in the glass and is also cast a shadow from the glass onto the bottle label.

The drink is now illuminated and i've notied the refraction of the light from the bottle have also created a glow on the left side. The side in shadow is still lit due to the white infinity cover reflecting the light back into and around the room.

I could have flagged the light to stop it spilling onto the side of the bottle but as I wanted more light, I left it.

I added a second light, a softbox to light the side of the bottle. Due to the softbox being so big and spreading light everywhere it also lit the background. However I find I like the result.

Happy with the lighting I built up the set with props

Overall i like the final image, the composition isn't the best but throughout the shoot i learned how much building a set one light at a time can help.

Click here to see a gallery with the images from this shoot

Freezing motion without HSS

January 08, 2018 in Flash, Still Iife, Studio

With this shoot, I wanted to again freeze a splash but this time within the studio.
Without the luxury of HSS, I had to change the way I typically use the studio equipment taking what I had learned from the first module, particularly artist research and what I had learned with this module in how strobe lights work.

As my maximum sync speed with the studio lights is 1/200th that means I have 200th a second to freeze motion which isn't fast enough to freeze the splash wanted. However, from learning about how strobe lights work, the pop of flash is much much quicker and varies depending on power. For example, at 1/64 power a strobe might flash at around 1/8000 a second. However, at full power, as the flash tube can't output more light it will output the light for long, so a flash may last 1/1000 of second or longer depending on the wattage of the light, still faster than max shutter speed will allow.

Last module I researched Tim Tadder and how he managed to shoot his Water Wig series. Tadder has very expensive equipment which could fire strong bursts for a short duration but was still limited by not have HSS.

To remedy this Tadder blocked out all ambient light, set his shutter speed fairly slow and allowed the speed of the flash to freeze the motion.

To start I turned on a single light to make sure I could put Tadder's technique into practice myself.

I turn off all other lights except for the flash head, placed my camera on a sturdy tripod and set my shutter speed to 0.4 seconds. I triggered the camera using a remote which meant I couldn't focus the lens however focus wasn't important at this stage.
I noticed a long trail of motion blur which made me realise the modelling light comes back on before the end of the exposure.

Light set up for background, building one light at a time.

I set up a backdrop featuring a forest scene as I wanted to create an outdoor winter theme with the image which I lit with a single softbox to ensure an evenly distributed light.
Wanting to shoot at f/8, typically a 'sweet spot' in lenses to achieve maximum sharpness, I altered the power output of the flash until the light meter read f/8 as correct exposure.

I set up my subjects, pointed a snoot from camera left at them which allowed me to direct the light across the subject in a narrow beam which meant I didn't have to worry about the light spilling onto the backdrop. It also meant the angle of incidence would send the angle of reflectance away from the camera allowing the light to shine through the glassware and liquid without creating harsh highlights.

Shooting at f/8 I changed the keylight's, the light that is primarily lighting the subject and typically the most powerful, until it metered for f/8.

Having the subjects in the scene meant I would set my lens to manual focus and pre-set it so I can trigger the camera with remote. I then took a few test shows dropping things into frame practicing timing and how much the scene would freeze.

It was also at this point I realised how easy it would be to accidenetally be in frame.

Satisfied with the test shots, I added water to the glass and went for it.

I then spent a lot of time re-taking shots and recomposing slightly to try and get the best shot and best splash possible.

One problem I came across in this shoot was with the radio triggers communicating between camera and light.

Here my key light was triggering but for some reason my softbox, to light the backdrop, wasn't.
I remedied this by switch the 'cell' function on the light. This allows the light to be triggered when a light sensor on the body of the flash head detects a flash. This meant the radio trigger would trigger my keylight, which the light sensor on my backdrop's light would detect and then trigger itself.

After a lot of shots I came away with several usable images, here is my favourite.

Though the motion isn't as frozen as my shots with my speedlite in HSS mode, it had frozen the motion enough and more so that if I was limited to the 1/200 max shutter speed.

Having already set up the light and backdrop I wanted to revisit my Jack Daniels shots again.
I arranged my set keeping the same lighting set up. From my previous shots attempts at shooting this scene I know I wanted to try lighting the bottle and glass independantly however as seen her the snoot isn't creating a narrow enough beam of light. To narrow the beam firruther, I added a grid.

Though still lighting more of the scene, the bottle is more exposed than the glass.

I added a second snoot behind the set and pointed it at the glass. Turning off my keylight to see the individual effect.

Together the 2 lights created this image below, the liquid in the glass is lit along with the christmas paper hat behind however the side label isn't as clear as bright as I would like.

Rather than add another light I used a reflector to bounce the light from the back light onto the side label, using the gold foil side to made the golden colour the whiskey is refracting.
Resulting in this final image.

A problem I had with this shoot was the placements of the light. The lighting rid is connected to rails on the ceiling which make fine adjustments hard. I could have arranged lights on light stands however on this occasion I asked a friend for help to hold the lights steady.
Here is a picture I took on my phone of the set up.

Click here to see a gallery of all the shoots in this post

Speedlites & High Speed Sync

January 08, 2018 in Studio, Flash

Speedlites, also known as hot-shoe flashes, are battery powered flashguns that can affix to the camera via hotshoe. Modern speedlites have a rotating head to aim the flash, can have their output controlled, an automatic function and can be triggered off camera.

There are many advantages to speedlites over a traditional studio flash head. The first, and perhaps most obvious, is their portability and accessibility being, able to fit in almost any camera bag and being battery powered mean they are very easy to carry around and power.

This makes lighting very accessible on location shoots such as wedding and out-of-studio portraits.

A problem that can occur with on-camera flash is that is can produce very hard, intense and flat lighting making most images lack depth and unflattering. Such as the image below, shot with speedlite on camera, facing forward and in TTL mode.

You can see the result is a very hard and flat lighting, this is due to the flash head being a small light source and that is is firing almost directly from the lens' point of view. You can see the hard outline of the person's shadow behind her and on her clothes.

The background is supposed to be black but due to the direct hard light on it appears a dark grey in which you can see the folds and creases.

The light however is well exposed due to the TTL function of the speedlight. As metering light on the go, particularly in event photography, is unrealistic I use TTL which stands for Through The Lens.

TTL is essentially auto mode in which the speedlight will quickly fire a preliminary flash and meter than flash through the lens before setting the correct output to correctly expose the image. This happens incredibly quickly and is unnoticeable but serves as a really useful function.

In this image, the flash head is pointing up to the ceiling. This turns a very small light source is a very large one as the ceiling turns into a giant reflector.

The result is soft, even lighting that looks very natural due to the top down direction and white ceiling reflecting daylight colour light back onto the scene.

I wanted to try a freeze motion with flash however, typical studio lights have are limited by the camera maximum sync speed meaning sync speed higher than around 1/200 are not possible.

This is because SLRs tend to have a focal plane shutter, which takes around 1/200sec to travel the height of the camera's sensor. As flashes are instantaneous by comparison, you can catch a shadow of the focal plane shutter as it travels like you can in this image shot at 1/250. Though interesting, my camera's top flash sync speed is 1/250 with it's pop-up flash.

However, in freezing motion you typically want shutter speeds of around 1/500 upwards, which is a problem with flash photography and focal plane shutter cameras.

HSS

Speedlites (and more modern studio lights) have a function called HSS (High Speed Sync).
With this function you have shoot at higher speed as the flash, as opposed to firing a single burst of light, will fire several in stroboscopic fashion extremely quickly meaning the shadows of the shutter are exposed allowing you to shoot at higher speeds.

The pay off for this however is typically a weaker output in intensity as the speedlite cannot charge it's capacitor quick enough to let off full power bursts.

I did the following shoot at home and put a emphasis on freezing motion as opposed to creating a usable commercial image. As such composition and styling took a back seat and I simply focused on freezing the motion and positioning the light in a pleasing way that would highlight the glass and splash well.

I starting with my camera on a tripod as I need a free hand for the splash, and attached a HSS compatible remote trigger on the hotshoe and set up a light stand with a radio receiver and speedlite attached. This allows me greater control of direction of light as I am not bound by simply reflecting the light.

With the flash in TTL mode, I set my shutter speed to over 1/250th and took several test shots.
As speedlights lacka modelling light I had to take several shots like the ones below to see how the light would look and varying aperture to see what level depth of field would create a better image.

With TTL I can make these changes and not have to worry about exposure changing, though exposure isn't consistent throughout possible due to the reflectivity of the glass/metal.

Once I settled on the lighting, I set my shutter speed to 1/1600 to freeze the motion.

Click here to see all the images from this shoot

Adding a second light

January 08, 2018 in Flash, Studio

With this shoot I wanted to work on building up lights and working towards moving beyond single light set-ups.

I started the shoot with setting up a single light, setting exposure and roughly getting a nice lighting style.

Here, in the middle image. I found the light was a little too high as the shadow from her nose was a little too long however April was moving around within the infinity cove so the light was going to change throughout each shot. The key thing was to keep the same distance from the light to ensure a consistent exposure throughout the shoot.

I then added a snoot behind April to separate her from the background and create a glow around her head. The snoot allows me to create a narrow beam of light that can illuminate smaller areas more accurately without spilling onto unwanted areas.

Overall this was a quick shoot with not much variety due to time on the day. However, I was please in seeing how effective a hairlight can in seperating subject from their background though I wish I was more careful aiming the snoot as the light doesn't quite reach the crown of April's head .

Single Light

January 08, 2018 in Flash, Studio

My first shoot with studio lighting began with single light set-ups.
This was the first time I had shot with studio lighting in a long time and something I was looking forward to as I had far less knowledge in comparison to ambient lighting.

We were tasked to work in groups for this shoot, however upon being left to work in groups I found a lot of people taking out phones. This led to me stepping up first to shoot.
I asked Katie to model for me and asked another person in the group to help move the light so I can see how the light falls on Katie's face without having to keep moving back and forth.

I found taking lead of the situation was met with a little bit of cynicism within the group and that often when asking for help, I was met with people staring at phones.

Studio lighting has always been rather intimidating to me as you're in control of every aspect of the image. I set my camera to 100 iso. This will allow me the cleanest image and, thanks to the intensity of light studio lighting can produce I don't have to worry about exposure at this sensitivity. I next set my shutter to it's highest sync speed of 1/250 which allows me to keep everything in the image sharp without causing sync issues with the lights.

My aperture depended on the intensity of the light. Due to flash illuminating the scene for only a fraction of a second only the ISO and aperture value with determine how much exposure the sensor recieves. As I've set my ISO for the cleanest image possible, only the aperture will change in value to effect exposure.

Triggering the flash

The camera needs to be able to communicate with the flash in order to flash at the right time. This is done with either a sync cable which connects the strobe and camera with a wire or more commonly a radio trigger.

The radio triggers consists of a transmitter which connect the camera via hotshoe and a receiver which plugs into the flash head, most commonly with a 3.5mm jack or a 6.35mm jack.

Upon pressing the shutter release, the hotshoe sends a signal to the transmitter which uses radio waves to send a signal to the receiver, triggering the flash.

The drawback to radio triggers include interference, particularly if others are using the radio triggers nearby. These is remedied with channel switches on most sets. There is also an issue with distances and line-of-sight causing the signal not to received by the flash head.

Metering Flash

To meter the flash you need a light meter. A camera's built-in meter can only measure ambient light as it cannot register the short strobe of light. Modern light meters have a flash setting which can detect the burst of light and give a read out of which settings will ensure the correct exposure.

I dialed in the ISO value, and ensured the infercone covered the light sensor to measure the incident light (the light falling on the subject) as opposed to to reflected light (light reflected from the subject) and placed the dome under the subjects chin facing the lens. I then triggered the flash which results in the screen producing an aperture value which will ensure the correct exposure.

Using the modelling light as a guide, I placed moved the light until I saw a pleasing result on Katie's face. Resulting in the set-up pictured above.

I metered the light and the result shows an aperture value of f/5.6. I dial the value into camera and take the shot.

The result is an almost rembrandt lighting style with Katie's face being side lit.

Due to being light a soft box, the soft light produces feathered shadows and flattering light for her skin. However the direction of the light produces a dramatic look.

I asked Katie to change her pose slightly for a few shots to see how the light would change without moving the light while also seeing which angles would flatter her best.

The image to the left broad lights Katie while giving a true rembrandt shadow.
This creates an interesting lighting style but it's not ideal for a beauty image as part of her face is hidden.

The image on the right is a tad over exposed, this may due me metering from the wrong side of her face. However, the majority of Katie's face is lit and visible however there isn't much connection with the audience due to the angle she is turned at. As she's looking directly into the light source it creates a fairly flat lighting, flattering to her skin but creating little depth.

However, if I turned her more towards the lens while, I can still light the majority of her face while creating interesting shadows. Remetering also will help the exposure issue
Such as the image below.

Though the added contrast in post edit slightly blows out the highlight I think due to the punchy nature of the image it's not a major issue.

Here I moved the light further to Katie's side to a 90 degree angle from the camera. This resulted in a split lighting.

The problem I had with this image is with my camera being set to automatic white balance.

The camera adjusted the white balance to the colour of the ambient light at the time, which must have been warm resulting in shifting the colour balance towards blue to compensate.

However as strobe lights tend to be close to daylight in colour, a white light of around 5500k, the resulting image as a distinct cold blue tone to it.

Thankfully I was shooting in raw making correcting this issue simple in post-production. Knowing the background was a neutral colour I could use it to correct the white balance.

However, if I didn't have something in frame to correct the white balance, or i wanted to set a predetermined light balance in camera I could have taken a shot with a 18% grey card in shot with cameras and software being able to set white balnce knowing the exact colour value of 18% grey in 5500k lighting.

The result is this colour corrected image, which looks more natural and accurate in colour reproduction. The split light delivers a very dramatic image as the unlit side of Katie's face is thrown into darkness.

This can again be alleviated by adding a reflector parallel to the light.

This would result in a image like the one below where the shadows are not thrown into total darkness and there is enough fill light to still retain detail.

The problem with this image is of course the posing taken at an unflattering moment.
I also find the lighting too dramatic with my goal being to produce a flattering light in a beauty style.

Repositioning the light, I wanted to find an angle of light that would flatter Katie and work well in a beauty shot.

As I repositioned the light, it was also necessary to remeter the light. I must have moved the light further away from Katie as upon remetering the light meter showed f/4 would give correct exposure.

I find this loop lighting style is more flattering and suits a beauty style of image more than side lighting styles like rembrandt and split lighting.

There is enough shadow on the Katie's face to create depth and form but the light is flat enough that it flatters and masks imperfections in her skin.

Wanting a tight show, I stepped closer to Katie to have her face fill the frame now i'm satisfied with the lighting and pose. I then colour toned the image to add warmth to the image and added contrast which unfortuneatly drew emphasis on imperfections in her skin.

The colour toning added vibrancy and contrast to the image, throwing the background into total darkness and helping Katie stand out from the neutral backdrop.
I then took the image from Lightroom, where I colour toned, into photoshop to finish editing.

I started with frequency seperation which allows me to seperate colour from texture and worked on the blemishes in Katie's skin that colour toning emphasised. Reducing redness and evening out her skin tone. I then reduced lines and wrinkles by working the texture of the image. I cloned out stray hairs and creating a 50% grey layer, overlayed and the doge and burn tool to enhance the detail in her eyes non-destructively. I then sharpened the image however, looking now I seemed to have over sharpened the image.

It had been a while since doing a shot like this, particularly in editing. It was interesting to see how much the lighting helped in flattering Katie saving time in post processing.

Click here to see all the images from this shoot

Studio Lighting

January 08, 2018 in Flash, Studio

The problem with ambient light is that it is uncontrollable. We can modify and attempt to alter the ambient light however we typically do not have control over intensity and colour and are ultimately finding work arounds to achieve the desired outcome.

Studio lighting refers to light that can be controlled. Typically, in intensity and then modified with attachment to the light head which can act to soften, direct, shape and colour the light.

In photography, we tend to use flash or 'strobe' light, which charge capacitors and then quickly dup the energy into a flash tube creating a very quick and strong burst of light.

There are many different brands of lights, popular ones include Bowens, Elinchrom, Profoto, Godox, Mets, Lastolite and Phottix though countless more exist and cover most price points.
Most brands tend to have proprietary systems which attach light modifiers to their flash head however modifiers are universal in function.

Please click each thumbnail and hover over the picture to see their descriptions.

Flash Head

Bowl Reflector

Soft Box

Umbrellas

Snoot

Barn doors

Beauty Dish

Gels & Grids

With studio lighting you can also have as many light sources are your equipment allows. Each with different intensities and shapes. As strobe have a much greater intensity of light you can shoot at almost any camera setting allowing you to change settings for artistic purpose as opposed to compensating to gain correct exposure.