Without flash, as above – or with flash as below….if you’re mind is on the right frequency, you should be tuned into how to use that environment to your compositional advantage.

Flash – or added light – has the opportunity to transform an average shady building – into a night time scene where a fairy is running between the trees….

This is not a complicated setup – the flash is about 10 meters away from the bricks, elevated on stand into the tree leaves. The Nikon sb-something-or-other shoe flash is popping at 1/4 power, I’ve lowered my camera ISO to darken the ambient as much as possible within the shutter range for flash 1/250th of a second.  

Exposure Explained:

• Ambient exposure is 1/250th a second @ f2.8 - ISO 200
• Flash altered reality is 11/250th a second @f4 – ISO 100

By dropping my ISO and increasing my aperture, I darkened the overall exposure of the scene by 2 stops.  That is enough to allow the light to make it’s mark – however strong you make the power settings on your flash unit will determine the contrast in the scene.

When you work with your flash off of your camera – the exposure values don’t change as you move closer to the subject or farther away.  Once you’ve freed yourself – take every advantage to work the envionment fully.

Listen to your shadows!

The shadows set the mood of your image.

Aiming your flash unit through the tree leaves gives you interesting and naturalized shadow shapes in your image.  So even though you are using an unnatural light source you have given it natural elements that help with the design and composition of your photo.  Draw your inspiration from these natural elements and build yourself a photo that exceed expectations!

As you’re listening to your shadows and you want to add that vintage golden distressed look buy and download the Golden Touch Texture Set from the create cart:

How well you listen and blend the natural elements and capture their essence defines your success:

Head to toe – full sized window – incandescent lamp – all included in the frame!

Is this a lighting problem that would make your head spin, or cringe away and avoid another approach because you feel you don’t have the gear? Read on, you may be stopping before you start!

We’re not talking about that faux, broad light look created by softboxes, that often leaves deep shadows. We’re talking about REALLY soft light.

How do you get it in a hurry, with minimal gear?

Think outside your gear.

Respond to your environment.

Realize the potential of all the elements you have been given.

And then you’re free to relate to your subject for the most engaging expression.

Here’s how to simplify your lighting quest by understanding the MOTIVATION – of the light in an environment.  The lighting from the picture window is northlight – extremely soft.  So to match that, you need a very large light source.  The room.

What is the ‘working‘ light source?  We’ll call it the ‘hot zone’ and it’s anywhere light directly from your strobes open, naked, bare bulbed tube hit’s a wall.  The strobe is no-longer the light source – transfer your thinking away from that.  The light then bounces from the wall – onto your subject.  What this allows you is to control the ratios of light on your subject.  The ratio controls the shaping of your subject.

What’s wrong with this image?

Canon 1ds 135mm lens – F/4.0 – ISO 320 – 1/250 second

Listen to the shadows!

The motivation is wrong – if there’s a picture window behind the subject, the eye nearest the window should not have a shadow on it! The MOTIVATION of the light is not right!

in the image above I’ve thought in terms of ‘fill light’ and put my strobe to the subject’s front (in diagram above it would be the bottom wall of the room) to generically fill the window light.

In the correct pattern as shown in our lead image (illustrated here again to the right) – rolls the light around the subject from the side offering a nice open and soft shadow toward the couch’s front and to the left of the subject.

Do you see the difference?

This is the difference between photographic lighting – and motivated and inspired lighting.  A fine distinction, but one that once pointed out – your realize your eye was giving you some unnatural feedback about. The unnatural feedback is an unconscious barrier to acceptance and understanding of your image by the viewer – remove it and you give them a better gateway to experience.

Trust the instincts your natural eye leads with as it has been trained by years of interpretation of it’s natural surroundings.

Changing the position of the light in the room, changes the Hot Zones

The result is a change in the amount of light on each wall – the amount is the ratio of light that will illuminate your subject.  So you can change the ratio and shaping of your subject by moving your light through the room.

Shadowless shaping

The bare bulb technique is faster to learn than a softbox.

Produces more natural than owning a custom studio.

Do you see any shadows you can learn from? Not really, but the subject is still nicely contoured by a very gentle cheek and eye shading.

The catch is that you’ll need a bare bulb so your average shoe flash won’t do it – you’ll need a Quantum Q Flash, Sunpak 120J, Alien Bee, Monoblock, or ProPhoto head without reflector.

Any of the classic lighting styles can be softly mimicked with very little effort in the same room by moving the position of the single bare bulb:

• Short Lighting
• Loop Lighting
• Broad Light pattern
• Closed Loop Lighting
• Rembrandt light portraits
• Side lighting
• Butterfly – with or without lens flair
• Dietrich – Paramount Portrait lighting
• Backlight portait with hard light or soft
• Wraparound lighting
• Crossover lighting
• Profile lighitng
• Dramatic Overexposure

If you’re careful when you let a little direct from the bulb light spill onto your subject the list doubles.

I will cover these styles in future posts.

After Flash:


Softer Balance:

I’m using my usual Alien Bee 800 with 11 inch silver reflector on a vagabond power pack unit.

What do I mean softer balance?  Can you see it?

The effect of changing your exposure to be able to capture the sky is a matter of balancing your strobe output with the brightness of the sky.  Here in these New York afternoon portraits I wanted to get the light streaming through the clouds as well as the antique aircraft while managing to highlight the bride and groom.  Checking my exposure for sky values led me to decrease my ISO to 100, increase my shutter speed to 1/250th of a second which is limited by flash sync speed, and then choose an aperture that under exposes the sky by 1-2 stops.  The final variable – to my thinking the only variable (as the other features of the image are dictated by my goals) is how much output should I set the flash to.

Do you see how I isolated my variables and got down to the core decision?

Not sure if I wrote that clearly, but that is the essence of ‘Hear the Shadows’……

Regarding Gear, the reason I carry such high powered strobes is to be able to make decisions without limitation by my flash output.  

Getting down to post production

Blue Skies – Lightroom Preset

I used my Blue Skies Lightroom preset and then moved into photoshop’s L*A*B* colorspace

I have a few posts coming up describing how to get the most out of your situation even if you really want to shoot directly into the sun. Here’s a good example with a vintage style applied with the ONE WORKFLOW actionset. I was able to quickly modify my overall contrast type with a single adjustment layer to lower the contrast and flatten the highlights. In the same layer, just a quick shortcut away, I tinted the global yellow (warmth) saturated the green, and tweaked the red, and darkened the blue. L*A*B* color mode is ingenious that way. A texture from the ‘Dark Descent’ texture package helped dapple and roughen the tonalities in an organic and random way.

So there you see how I use all the facets of photography, lighting, and photoshop to create a memorable set of portraits. Take a loot at their thank-you card design: