Tag Archive for: light

A tip on lighting patterns

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Today a quick tip on lighting

Often people ask me what they should use to show patterns on the wall from blinds, racks, chairs etc.
You have to understand that to show patterns you will need a light that is pretty hard, meaning if you place a softbox very close to blinds you will not get the effect you want (see the first example)

 

This is of course pretty logical because the light is literally spreading around the structure of the item you place in between the model and the light source, meaning you will hardly see any patterns.

Nadine October 12 2014 0001-Edit

when you change the softbox for a reflector or even a bare-bulb strobe you will start to see the effect (see second shot).

Nadine October 12 2014 0020-Edit

Now the fun part comes into the angle of the strobe and… the distance, with all these elements you can control the outcome of the shot.
Good luck.

 
For much more tips on lighting get my book “Mastering the modelshoot” or download one of my instructional videos via : https://frankdoorhof.com/web/shop-videos-etc/direct-video-downloads/

Tip for light meters and ambient light

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Often I get messages from people that their light meter is not reliable outside, inside no problem but outside…..
Do always remember that outside there is also ambient light.

Let’s say you have a small flash system (the system flashes like Canon/Nikon/Sony) and your shooting full manual and get a reading of F5.6 inside, now when you go outside a day later and you get F11 don’t expect that the strobe is actually on F11, it could very well be that the strobe is outputting only F8 or lower.

8 Juni 2014 Marie 0066 1

The meter works very simple
When you press the button to meter in strobe mode (the lighting bolt) it will actually wait for a pulse and start metering, now the pulse from the strobe is registered of course and the meter does it’s work BUT if the ambient light (on the giving shutter speed) is higher than the strobe the meter will of course give you the F stop for the ambient light (since it overpowers the strobe).
So the next time you’re outside and want to check if your strobe is registering, or if you suspect a problem…. first set the strobe on the lowest setting and meter, now start raising the strobe and if the meter value doesn’t change you know you’re metering ambient (or in other words, ambient is overpowering the strobe).

 

So don’t bash the meter, understand how it works 😀

now let’s look at some solutions….

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Light as story teller

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Tip :
Light as story teller



A lot of you probably already know that I’m always teaching my students not to only create good light but also try to add something different to a picture, I call this “story telling”. During the New York workshops I hit the jackpot by shooting the almost perfect example.

One of my students, a really nice guy with an open face (friendly) stood in front of my camera during the part of the workshops where I shoot some head shots from the students to let them experience what it means to be in front of the camera.

I will use whatever light is available for these shots and in this case it was only a varistar wide reflector for the Elinchrom, they already packed all the rest of the gear. It’s actually only meant for the realization what a model goes through in front of the camera, if we end up with something the students can use that’s an added plus 😀

By angling it I got it to create a nice vignette on the background, but… the light was relatively high up, no problem for the purpose of this segment, but when step a bit too close something “funky” happens, a lot of contrast in the face.

Normally you end up with a deletion of the shot and ask the subject to stand one step further away, but in this case……

Workshops 5thfloor NY Headshots 29-30 August 2014 (70 of 100)-Edit

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Many different looks from one setup

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Often I’m asked what kind of setups I use and what kind of modifiers.
What people often don’t realize is that with only one modifier you can chance a lot just by playing with the angles and controlling the contrast/lightfall off. In fact placing a light closer or further away also makes a huge impact on the image look, add to this the option to feather a light source (using the sides of the light) and you know that there is a lot possible with one modifier and light.

 

It gets even more interesting when you are combining two strobes and for example add a gel to one of them.
During the workshop this weekend I made a setup like this with our model Lennaa and decided it would be a cool thing to share on the blog.

 

I started out with one strobe with a red gel.

Lenaa Juli 25 20142025

To get a bit more “punch” in the image I added another strobe without gel under the same angle to mix the two.

Lenaa Juli 25 20142035 Read more