I have been paying more and more attention to the possibilities offered for unique photography by using and controlling available light. There is a softer element to the images, a more natural feeling and a brightness and color that you just don’t get when using flash.
Most photographers are relying on flash to give them control over image creation. More often than not, they are settling for flat lighting and when looking at many of these images, they are obviously flashed.
Recently Steve Bedell of Dover NH, ran a seminar on available light. Steve is a Master Photographer and former president of the New Hampshire PPA. Steve has won the NH Photographer of the Year Award, seven times. In other words, Steve knows what he is doing.
The seminar ran all day (from 12 pm till 8 pm). We started at his studio and ended on the beach. The first part of the seminar was in the downtown area of his studio. Much of it had an edgy urban look.
The focus was on learning how to photograph in the environment, with most of the seminar dedicated to working with available light in a variety of settings.
Steve talked about the three components to available light, they are
1. Getting a good exposure 2. Using a proper white balance 3. Brightness/ Contrast and using contrast and subtractive lighting to control lighting patterns on the face and get a dramatic portrait look.
Emphasis was placed on identifying and controlling the direction of light. An overhead light source creates a problem with the illumination of the face. A strong overhead light will give you dark eye sockets and an inability to control lighting patterns on the face.
In order to control overhead light, you need to block it. This can be done by photographing your subject in the shade of a building, or under a tree, or under any kind of a barrier or overhang. Next you have to determine the light source. Where is the light source that we can use as our main light. How can we use it to create direction.
Is their an opportunity to use available light as a fill or accent light. By evaluating the scene you may be able to position the subject to take advantage of a directional light as well as an accent light.
One way to determine the quality of light is to look at the subjects eyes. You should see a catch light. If you don’t see light in their eye’s, then you aren’t working the light properly.
In this image, their is directional light from an open sky, the building to the left is providing shade, that is used to control the light and create a direction to the light. In this scene the light is coming from the right and above.
The subject is low, on the sidewalk because there is not much shade from the building.
By having the subject lift her chin and raise her head, we get light into her eyes from the panel of light above and to the front.
Steve set this up and then talks through the setup. Oh, iso 200, at 2.8 no higher than 4 on aperture with whatever your meter gave you for speed. Meter under the chin, don’t block the light source, bulb to camera position. Steve also liked to rate the camera for 200 iso and the light meter for 160. Without this adjustment, the metered readings seem to be too dark.
Steve was big on photographing within a controlled aperture range of from 2.8 – 4.0.
I will go into more of these scenes from the workshop, but more importantly, as a class it would be interesting if we all recruited a subject, photographed them in a scene and then talked about the setup.
I would like this to be an open forum, for professional photographers to explore available light photography. Are you interested?
Posted on May 22nd, 2009 by admin
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