Tag Archive for: strobes

Light from different angles

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Light should always come from…

I’ve read a lot of books about photography. Some older books often describe light as much as possible, like it has to come from one side and mimic the light in nature. And although that sounds logical, for me it never really made sense to limit myself. When we watch movies, we often see actors walking towards the camera with a bright sun behind them, creating an aura of light and glow, but we can still see the face 100% lit. Well, if you ever tried to shoot something like this, you know you ended up with some really awful shots with a white sky or a totally black model. So when Hollywood can do it, we are allowed to play with our lights right?So, light from different angles.

Let’s talk about angles, and different angles of light

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about angles. One rule most people will agree upon is Light from below is often not something we use in our photography. Unless of course, you want that freaky horror look. I actually always call this lighting “Halloween lighting”. An one light setup, I also don’t see a lot of people use, but which is one of my favorite ones is the light from above.

This lighting setup has some really cool benefits but also some big drawbacks.

One of the things I love about this setup is the inverse square law in action. You can really see the light drop off over your model, creating a very nice contrasty image.
But when you place your model against the backdrop, you also get a nice vignette effect around your model. Move your model slightly forward, and you can get more or less light on the backdrop. As you can see it’s a great setup, and you only need one strobe.

So what is the disadvantage of lights from a different angle?

The model has to be careful where to look. This means you have to coach your model constantly and choose your angles carefully.
If you want the model to look a way that just doesn’t light the eyes, you can always make your model wear sunglasses (cool and great to solve lighting issues). Or use a small fill-in light, but when using a fill-in light, you will lose some of the contrast. So, sunglasses are often my preference.

In the next shots, I’m using a mix of the Rogue Frank Doorhof FlashBender and our small Geekoto striplight, both above the model aimed down under a slight angle. These are perfect examples when light from different angles work!

By moving around the model, you control contrast and the depth in the shot. Straightforward is great, but when you shoot under an angle, this setup really comes alive.
In this series, I’m also varying the colors slightly for added effect.

Model: Claudia

light from different angles, this time from above light from different angles. this time above

During the workshops, we always try to do 3-4 totally different sets, and this is just one 😀
Also, want to visit a workshop?
Visit fotografie-workshops.nl for more information. The workshops are in Dutch but if you let us know a few weeks in advance, we can switch to English.
Don’t want to travel?
It’s also possible to book a full day 1:1 online workshop; see here for more info.

WOW that shines like crazy

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And it’s super cheap

Reflective material is a great way to spice up your photoshoot.
You can use it as a set, backdrop or even wrap it around your model. but today we are using it in a set with some colors and hard light hitting it to get a beautiful glow in the material.

And the fun part, it’s really cheap and you can buy it in almost every party shop.
In our case it’s called “holographic” material and they have it in different colors, do make sure you always check materials with your phone (flashlight) to predict the reflection. Not all material looks the same when you throw some light on it.

Here you can read the previous blog post with the images.

And because video is always a beter tool, we also made a “how did I shoot this one” video about it.

 

Cheap can be more fun than you think

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Is gear important?

I hear it all the time: the focus on gear.

“My lens is cheap,” “I have an old camera,” “I only have one strobe,” etc.
In all honesty, of course, gear is important, but you can create awesome art/photos, etc., with your phone nowadays. My motto over the year has been, “If people look at the quality of the pixels, the image is not strong enough.” That doesn’t mean you can just “wing” it and not care about your gear, but it shouldn’t be the main focus.

The same goes for sets. They are important too.
When people look at my portfolio, a lot of people don’t realize that most of the shots were taken during workshops or events. As you will understand, we don’t have a lot of time to create sets, and of course, we love to stay on budget, and that’s what today’s blog post is about: Cheap sets.

Fun and cheap sets

With photography, it helps when we don’t focus on light but on shadows; this is something you probably heard from day 1. The shadows tell you almost everything about the light source used, the angle, distance etc., but one step further is to realize we don’t really work with light but with reflections.
This also explains why we can use black reflectors to take out the shine on someone’s head, for example.

Reflections and shine

And don’t we just love it when something gets a beautiful “glow” in a shot?
Reflections can be a problem but also something really cool you can use in your image.
Today we take a look at some very cheap material you can buy in most party shops. It’s called (well, at least this one) holographic material, and we used it to build a nice background for one of the sets during a workshop. You can even get it in different colors.

A good technique is to use your phone and shine over the material; this will show you how the material reflects and should give you a good idea of how to use it in your shoot.

Fresnel for high contrast

When I used my phone to shine over this material, it immediately started to glow. So, for this setup, I knew we could hit the background with some harsh light for some extra contrast and “oomph” in the shot. If you shoot this with a soft box, it can work fine, too. But it will be a lot less extreme. So on the model, I’m using the Nanlite Fresnel spot (this is one of my favorite modifiers for a great classic high contrast look). The nice thing about a Fresnel is that you focus your light, and even when you use it on the extreme settings, it still has a wonderful effect on the skin of the model.

To make sure the material also shines and to get some nice color effects, I’ve placed two Geekoto GT200’s with the Rogue magnetic system with a red gel on one side and a blue gel on the other.

Together, they created a very nice blend of color and light on the model, plus the material gave a wonderful glow, especially when our model leaned forward.
So let’s take a look at the results from this setup, and in the next blog post, I show the behind the scenes video.

cheap sets

During the workshops, we always try to do 3-4 totally different sets, and this is just one :D. We often try to create cheap sets.
Also want to visit a workshop?
Visit fotografie-workshops.nl for more information. The workshops are in Dutch, but if you let us know a few weeks in advance, we can switch to English.
Don’t want to travel?
It’s also possible to book a full day 1:1 online workshop; see here for more info.

The Geekoto Lantern in action

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Some light sources are special

The moment you see the Geekoto Lantern you know exactly what you’re going to get.
A beautiful soft light from the front of the softbox, but also a lot of light emitted from the sides.
This makes the lantern the perfect softbox for new born, product and fashion photography when you need a lot of light but don’t want the light too harsh and the edge transfers on the set. The lantern does exactly this.

In this behind the scenes video I use it for a full body quick to setup fashion shoot.