Make Light Real

Neil January 15th, 2008

Strobist has been discussing hard light lately and I remembered I’d shot these to talk about later.

Here’s a photo of the setup with my Alien Bee 800 - 11inch reflector, and here’s a photo of the intended result

Read on to hear my comments on the setup and lighting motivation behind it. This is a portrait shoot commissioned for a senior in High School, a ‘tradition’ here in the United States.

So here’s the wide overall shot to give you a bearing on the location I was working. Just the side of the road, on a coutry (not busy) road outside my small town. Going into this I knew my subject’s bike was a big part of his life and he brought it specifically to have a picture with it. I also knew that he is currently working for a printing shop that regularly prints banner and poster sized images so I wanted to give him something he would be proud enough to use as a large poster. The second image in the post is the strongest image from this set in my opinion, and gives himself and his bike equal play in something worthy of a motocross poster.

I always start with some goal, some thought, some concept when I’m working with lighting because otherwise it can end up feeling contrived. The essential point I drive home in my lighting workshops is one of motivation. A motivated light source looks like it belongs there, becuase it is believably natural - and also connected into the emotional and visual ethos of the image. On this shoot I not only had the goals in mind, but I had a few limitations as well. My vagabond’s battery was flat - so I turned on my Honda Element and plugged the vagabond’s DC converter directly into the 12V of the car’s electrical system. In the above shot where the vagabond is firing - you can see the cord trailing into the back of the car.

Let’s get back to motivation, especially in light of overpowering the sun. If we’re going to try and overpower the sun’s brightness in an image, it had better make sense visually otherwise we’re just going to confuse the viewer and end up with weak images. So you are not going to be able to eliminate the sun as a lighting element so the question is begged how to augment it.

As I tend to emphasize, look at your shadows. In this image of Kevin on the bike I’ve nearly eliminated shadows from the picture and it’s a bit awkward. There’s a shadow from the handlebar on his wrist and under his chin looks almost shiny. We need to discus the delicate balance of angles between the sun, your primary light source, and your camera angle.

My first suggestion when trying to overpower the sun is to keep your light source to one side of the sun, and do not try to provide fill. As for style and motivation, think of it as if you’re bending the sunlight’s direction, and set your power output to keep a natural amount of shadow. Don’t eliminate your shadows out of a fear of darkness, or your eliminate the shapes of your subject. Simply see the shadows and work with them to accentuate the shapes, outlines and natural possibilities of your location and it’s textures.

From there work all the angles and learn about your subject, let your intuition and creativity refine your setup or focus on your interaction with your subject.

How to get better blue skies:

The other consideration you may have if you are trying to overpower the sun, would be how to get a blue sky. If you shoot into the sun, you can’t reproduce that blue because it’s too bright. Blue must be dark to reproduce in your images. Often the opposite side of the horizon provides the darkest blue, but it can also be hazy and does not give you much shaping ability either. So I chose to use the southwestern sky as the background. You can see here that lower to the horizon the haze shows up, so I choose the side of the road to give myself a ditch to stand in allowing a better perspective to get the subject in front of the higher darker blue.

So that’s a look through the various angles I explored, most of what you see me shooting is wide angle. The one I liked best was from a 50mm lens, shot from lower in the ditch and further away.

 

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• Motivation , Photographic Flash , Photography Lighting , Technical , how to , learning