There is a saying I like use when teaching lighting classes, ‘let the light breath.’ This refers to figuring out what is the best lighting ratio between outside ambient light and your strobe on the subject. There is no right answer. When shooting assignments the client often tells you what style of lighting and mood they are looking for, other times they give you full creative control. Ratios can go from a fill flash ration where the flash is almost the same exposure as the daylight, or to very dramatic with the ambient light being underexposed 2 stops or more.
I like to darken my ambient exposure from minus 1/2 to 2 stops on many shots, especially if there are clouds. Darkening my ambient allows my flash ‘to breath’. With a dark background I can really see my lighting and the fine details of accent lights and subtle fill. With a fill flash ratio of lighting the strobe is less apparent or not even obvious….and that might be your goal for the shot. There is no right answer.
Yesterday I was working with Greg, a local athlete in town, a runner, jumper, fighter…a very talented guy. We worked on some running shots on the university track, and I liked the mood and intensity of this image. And the background was underexposed 1 1/2 stops to achieve this effect.
Tech: Nikon D3, 45mm tilt shift, 1/200 at f27. ISO 100. One Elinchrom Ranger was used with a Freelite A head shot through a 39″ Rotalux deep Octabox . Triggered by the Skyport wireless system.
Working more with the tilt shift lens, really like the mood the soft focus creates in images. Here is a surfer on Hollywood Beach in Miami photographed using this lens. Since using high speed sync with this lens works fine, I was able to shoot at f2.8 to maintain the shallow depth of field I wanted with mid day light. Tech: D3, 45mm PC-E lens, 1/5000 at F2.8, ISO 100. 2 SB900s with no diffusion, high speed sync.
The first big snowstorm of the season arrived today, and school was cancelled for the kids. Our neighborhood turns into a winter recreation zone with kids sledding, snowshoeing and building forts everywhere. I couldn’t resist going out and shooting in the snow, but the challenge was keeping my gear dry since the snow was still falling. I wanted to capture the snow in my shot, so I knew adding some flash and darkening the sky would accentuate the snowflakes against the gray sky.
I used two Elinchrom Quadras to light the shot. I placed these in LowePro bags, and put the heads inside plastic bags. This isn’t something I recommend, since the flash will get hot and eventually melt the bag to the flash. But since it was 20 degrees outside, and I was going to take time between shots to allow the flash to cool, I used this technique (do as we say, not as we do…). The great thing about the Elinchrom packs are I could control the output of them via the Skyport on my camera. This way you never need to open the bag and can keep things dry. I used my Nikon D3 for this image; this camera can take a lot of abuse and never fails. Tech: Nikon D3, 14-24mm, ISO 100, F16 at 1/250. Two Elinchrom Quadras used at 400 watts with standard reflectors.
I recently went to Wyoming with a friend to work on some new stock images. We found a fantastic location in the Medicine Bow Mountains. After shooting some available light images of Steve boulder hopping, I knew the image needed some light to spice it up.
We used two Elinchrom Rangers and one Quadra to light the shot. We used the standard reflectors, no grids or softboxes. This maintains the specular edgy look. The trick with this hard edged light is feathering the light so it doesn’t spill and overexposre the white rocks. To accomplish this we aimed the reflectors very high, almost up at the sky. It doesn’t even look like the lights are aimed at the subject. But as long as the bottom edge of the reflector is aimed at the model you will get light. In post production we darkened the sky and added a little Lucis Art. Tech: Nikon D3, 24-70mm, f11 at 1/200, ISO100.
Always fun to see my images in print, especially when it is an advertisement. Look for this ad in photo magazines, this one was in Digital Photo Pro Magazine. If you want to see how this image was done, check out the earlier blog post and video of behind the scenes. Thanks go out to Mark Astmann and the design team for coming up with this concept!