Lighting Techniques

[ratcatcher]

Hello!

In efforts to improve my lighting proficiency, I am analysing my favorite images and attempting to understand the techniques used. It would be excellent to receive comments on the following images. Any advice would be greatly appreciated — thanks so much!

R

 

[Pieter12]

1 & 3. Lit from above & underexposed
2 & 4. Strobe on or near camera, probably ringlight.
5. Hard to tell with all the reflections on the pages.
6. Similar to 2 & 4, maybe a larger, more powerful bare bulb strobe.

 

[ratcatcher]

1 & 3. Lit from above & underexposed
2 & 4. Strobe on or near camera, probably ringlight.
5. Hard to tell with all the reflections on the pages.
6. Similar to 2 & 4, maybe a larger, more powerful bare bulb strobe.

Thank you! This is super helpful.

 

[Pieter12]

Another note--1 & 3 most probably have a secondary light on the background, #1 might have a dark floor or dark cloth on the ground to prevent light being reflected on the body and lower face.

 

[ratcatcher]

Another note--1 & 3 most probably have a secondary light on the background, #1 might have a dark floor or dark cloth on the ground to prevent light being reflected on the body and lower face.

Definitely, this makes sense — again, very much appreciated!

 

[M Carter]

When you try to reverse-engineer this stuff, look at where the shadows are too, not just the light.

A lot of looks don't necessarily need the exact gear used in the shot. Like #1 could be a large-ish (like 11") reflector with a grid, or a small soft box up high. It looks to me like the key light ias also lighting the BG, it's back far enough.

A couple of those have that hard, on-camera-flash look that's popular with some people.
If I had to match shot #3, I'd start with a strip light with a fabric grid up high - looks like there's some soft light on the BG as well.
The open-book shot is too messy to see what's in the shot and what's reflecting from the paper.
Last shot looks bare bulb off to the side. A cool way to replicate that look is take the diffusion off a small or medium softbox and turn it inside-out, so it's black inside instead of silver. Creates a very hard look that still has control; doing that with a silver reflector often spreads the light too much.

Sometimes oddball mixes of gear can do cool things - on the attached photo, I used an 11" speedo reflector with a grid, but I put a sheet of white mylar behind the grid. Sort of directional and somewhere between hard and soft. That was up high and just hitting her face; a 3x6' diffusion panel with a flash head for fill, and a 650 fresnel (hot) on the background. It was pushed Tungsten E6, so the strobes were gelled full CTB. The BG light gave me a 1/2 second exposure, the flash froze the model - shot it handheld and purposefully shook the camera to blur the BG a bit.

 

[ratcatcher]

Hi M Carter,

This information is incredibly helpful — all very clear. Working through your comments now and adding to my notes — thank you so much!

Best,

R

When you try to reverse-engineer this stuff, look at where the shadows are too, not just the light.

A lot of looks don't necessarily need the exact gear used in the shot. Like #1 could be a large-ish (like 11") reflector with a grid, or a small soft box up high. It looks to me like the key light ias also lighting the BG, it's back far enough.

A couple of those have that hard, on-camera-flash look that's popular with some people.
If I had to match shot #3, I'd start with a strip light with a fabric grid up high - looks like there's some soft light on the BG as well.
The open-book shot is too messy to see what's in the shot and what's reflecting from the paper.
Last shot looks bare bulb off to the side. A cool way to replicate that look is take the diffusion off a small or medium softbox and turn it inside-out, so it's black inside instead of silver. Creates a very hard look that still has control; doing that with a silver reflector often spreads the light too much.

Sometimes oddball mixes of gear can do cool things - on the attached photo, I used an 11" speedo reflector with a grid, but I put a sheet of white mylar behind the grid. Sort of directional and somewhere between hard and soft. That was up high and just hitting her face; a 3x6' diffusion panel with a flash head for fill, and a 650 fresnel (hot) on the background. It was pushed Tungsten E6, so the strobes were gelled full CTB. The BG light gave me a 1/2 second exposure, the flash froze the model - shot it handheld and purposefully shook the camera to blur the BG a bit.

 

[Helge]

Read Stanley McCandless - A Method of Lighting the Stage.
Probably the most important and influential book on lighting ever.
It's written in the thirties for theatre lighting (with several updates and reprints), but is applicable to any kind of dramatic lighting which of course includes photography.
It's a great start.

 

[M Carter]

Read Stanley McCandless - A Method of Lighting the Stage.
Probably the most important and influential book on lighting ever.
It's written in the thirties for theatre lighting (with several updates and reprints), but is applicable to any kind of dramatic lighting which of course includes photography.
It's a great start.

In the 90's I wanted to differentiate my commercial work, started reading American Cinematographer, and bought a bunch of fresnels and hot lights for shooting fashion. Used theatrical lights are a great deal for hot lights, sometimes you have to replace the bates connectors with edison plugs and replace the clamps with TVMPs, but you can get things like 650 fresnels and open-faced lights with barn doors pretty affordably.

The one thing that theatrical lighting doesn't seem to address is softening sources with bounce or diffusion; even today it's very rare to go to a show and see soft banks for lights, they seem to just use "more light" to fill in shadows. I've found a mix of diffused light (softboxes, panels, hanging huge sheets of ripstop) and hard light is the key to a lot of looks I like.

 

[Helge]

Diffuse source light as such isn’t used in theatre much since:
- It takes up too much space. There is really nothing to bounce off on a scene. Meaningful soft boxes are too large.
- It’s inefficient. It’s take up at least double the power and often more to achieve the same level.

It is approximated with arrays of light however. That’s easier to control and more flexible.
That’s what you should pay attention to as a photographer.

Soft diffused light, while nice and useful under some circumstances is terribly overused though. It’s become a cliche to join bokeh and the plethora of other overused effects.
It’s nice as a ground. But unless you build on it you’re just another baby photographer.
The time for hard light has come.

 

[M Carter]

Diffuse source light as such isn’t used in theatre much since:
- It takes up too much space. There is really nothing to bounce off on a scene. Meaningful soft boxes are too large.
- It’s inefficient. It’s take up at least double the power and often more to achieve the same level.

While I'm aware of the limitations of using soft light in a theatrical setting, my point is that studying theatrical lighting will only teach you theatrical lighting. Studio or location lighting has its own needs and advantages, and much more flexibility of light placement, the size of reflectors or panels and so on, and one of the most powerful techniques in lighting for still images - mixing strobe and continuous light. Strobes are a huge tool for still shooting, with endless possibilities and an endless learning curve - but you won't learn a thing about them studying cinema or stage lighting. (Not to say those are useless areas of study, I learned a tremendous amount of technique from studying cinema lighting; I had to apply what I learned of that to using strobes though).

I don't think using arrays of light to create soft lighting is very practical - it takes more gear, more time, and an endless rabbit-hole of trying to eliminate overlapping shadows of various densities. Sure, it can be done, or you can achieve the same end in moments with a softbox or bounce or diffusion. If you believe "the time for hard light has come", I'm not sure what that even means. For my work, I envision the look I want and get out the tools to turn that idea into an image. If I need a blazing open face or a giant sheet of diffusion, I do it, and I do it in the quickest way possible to get the look that I want.

This is a mix of hard and soft light, and I didn't need an "array" of hard lights to do it, I didn't have the space or time to even consider that. She's a realtor and needed a shot that was bright, warm and natural - it needed a fair amount of strobe power to balance with the sun, and a medium softbox worked out just fine:

This manufacturer was pushing a line of white stretch jeans. We settled on soft and white for the look, and needed poses that showed the fabric would stretch and look good. So the model was surrounded with white ripstop and a few flash heads thrown up - we wanted absolutely no hard shadows, so even her face was popped up a bit with a metal reflector with mylar over it:

Same issue here - I wanted absolute softness to blend with the harsh contrast and grain of the Polagraph film... diffusion panels, strobes, a grid spot with mylar behind the grid on her face. Took about a minute to set up.

So to me, soft light is extremely useful and I have zero interest in trying to duplicate it using the wrong tools (an array of lights vs. a softened source). If that makes me a baby photographer or if people find my work cliche or over-done... as long as I'm pleased with it and my clients keep hiring me to do it, I'm perfectly happy. And heck, I'll still point a fresnel right at a model if I want that look:

 

[Helge]

While I'm aware of the limitations of using soft light in a theatrical setting, my point is that studying theatrical lighting will only teach you theatrical lighting. Studio or location lighting has its own needs and advantages, and much more flexibility of light placement, the size of reflectors or panels and so on, and one of the most powerful techniques in lighting for still images - mixing strobe and continuous light. Strobes are a huge tool for still shooting, with endless possibilities and an endless learning curve - but you won't learn a thing about them studying cinema or stage lighting. (Not to say those are useless areas of study, I learned a tremendous amount of technique from studying cinema lighting; I had to apply what I learned of that to using strobes though).

I don't think using arrays of light to create soft lighting is very practical - it takes more gear, more time, and an endless rabbit-hole of trying to eliminate overlapping shadows of various densities. Sure, it can be done, or you can achieve the same end in moments with a softbox or bounce or diffusion. If you believe "the time for hard light has come", I'm not sure what that even means. For my work, I envision the look I want and get out the tools to turn that idea into an image. If I need a blazing open face or a giant sheet of diffusion, I do it, and I do it in the quickest way possible to get the look that I want.

This is a mix of hard and soft light, and I didn't need an "array" of hard lights to do it, I didn't have the space or time to even consider that. She's a realtor and needed a shot that was bright, warm and natural - it needed a fair amount of strobe power to balance with the sun, and a medium softbox worked out just fine:

This manufacturer was pushing a line of white stretch jeans. We settled on soft and white for the look, and needed poses that showed the fabric would stretch and look good. So the model was surrounded with white ripstop and a few flash heads thrown up - we wanted absolutely no hard shadows, so even her face was popped up a bit with a metal reflector with mylar over it:

Same issue here - I wanted absolute softness to blend with the harsh contrast and grain of the Polagraph film... diffusion panels, strobes, a grid spot with mylar behind the grid on her face. Took about a minute to set up.

So to me, soft light is extremely useful and I have zero interest in trying to duplicate it using the wrong tools (an array of lights vs. a softened source). If that makes me a baby photographer or if people find my work cliche or over-done... as long as I'm pleased with it and my clients keep hiring me to do it, I'm perfectly happy. And heck, I'll still point a fresnel right at a model if I want that look:

I never said anything about simulating diffused light in a studio setting (though it could be usefully for a scene look), I was simply pointing out that the effect of a big enveloping diffused light was not lost on McCandless or later scene light people. That just had to do it in a different way.

Reading on scene and movie lighting will teach you about the fundamentals of how and why light works. And it will teach you the origins of those tropes.
You get a more relaxed attitude and “just” grok them better.

The enveloping soft box has become sort of omnipresent since the 90s and just signals generic “high budget photo shoot”.
You see it just about everywhere and it is part the silent crisis commercial photography finds itself in.
Very few people are trained in much else than variations on this and if something different is suggested it is immediately discarded as “cheesy” or “for someone else”.
For example using cookies on front of hard light is rarely seen.

 

[Pieter12]

Cookies in front of a hard light...albeit with a diffuser between.

 

[Helge]

Cookies in front of a hard light...albeit with a diffuser between.
View attachment 242864

Sure, anyone can do it. Just a matter of going with it for a job.
There is just a heck of a lot more to it than just using a fresnel light and holding stuff in front of it.

 

[Pieter12]

Sure, anyone can do it. Just a matter of going with it for a job.
There is just a heck of a lot more to it than just using a fresnel light and holding stuff in front of it.

I am not sure what your point is here. Not everyone is taking photographs on paid assignments. It is a question more of using specific techniques to achieve a mood or look. I commissioned hundreds of photos during my career as an art director, and the photographer was certainly able and permitted to use any technique that produced an image that met the client's and my needs.

 

[Helge]

Paid work is what sets the bar and modus operandi for the rest of the industry, including amateurs.

Commercial work is the aesthetic that you have shoved down your throat wherever you look, and it’s quite understandable that it becomes the reference point.
There will always be outliers and people who are willing to experiment, but mostly they operate underneath the noise floor of all the other stuff.

 

[gorbas]

A cool way to replicate that look is take the diffusion off a small or medium softbox and turn it inside-out, so it's black inside instead of silver.

Brilliant idea! Thank you M Carter!

 

[Pieter12]

Paid work is what sets the bar and modus operandi for the rest of the industry, including amateurs.

Commercial work is the aesthetic that you have shoved down your throat wherever you look, and it’s quite understandable that it becomes the reference point.
There will always be outliers and people who are willing to experiment, but mostly they operate underneath the noise floor of all the other stuff.

Besides editorial and maybe fashion. how many galleries or museums display commercial, assigned work? Or books for that matter?

 

[Helge]

Besides editorial and maybe fashion. how many galleries or museums display commercial, assigned work? Or books for that matter?

How many people read photo books and go to gallery shows of photographs? Even when that happens it's very rare that it's studio work. Mostly it's classics of outdoor or street, or very simply lit B&W stuff like Helmut Newton (who by the way often did use hard direct light from a lamp, or camera mounted flash when he used artificial light (years before Terry Richardson).
What I'm saying is whether we want and know it or not, the stuff you see on billboards, in magazines, websites and shopping in Uniqlo sets a standard of "normal and good" in most peoples brains.