I’ve been in this photography game for a while now, but up to this point all my work has been shot using available light or on camera flash (with a few brief experiments with taking my flashgun off camera with a 2 foot extension cord.) So it was with great excitement that I ran to catch a bus bright and early yesterday morning to take me to a course on studio lighting and photography.
The course was held by Studio Time and was a great introduction to the ins and outs of setting up your lighting using studio lights, using light meters properly, lighting your subject and your background, high key lighting, low key lighting, the use of gels and a bunch of other useful stuff. I went on the course with my mate Danny and there was just 1 other participant so it was the perfect number, it was very hands on and they had a model in and everything.
Within a few minutes of setting up the lighting I was getting shots like this and thinking that shooting in a studio is too easy.
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| From Studio Session |
We learnt about how light behaves in the studio, how to reflect it with different reflectors and how to absorb it with blacks. From this next shot you’ll see how the white foam was used to bounce the light back on the model from the softbox that was pointing down on her. Obviously the actual shot wouldn’t reveal the manky looking foam.
The model Jane was incredibly photogenic, if anything this course confirmed my suspicions that it’s easy to get stunning results once you have your technical wings and can get the model to pose. The world’s top studio photogs have got it even easier, they’ve have their help spend a few hours setting up all the lights so by they time they arrive everything is good to go, next thing a stunning model who knows how to pose enters the scene, they snap a few shots and send the memory card off to someone else to post process. Too easy.
We learnt high key (whites background, overexposed image with high contrast to bring out the featres)
Low key (dark, moody film noir style shots with just the one directional gridded spot light to light the face against a black background)
Terror photos- Danny was adjusting the light in the background and fired a shot off to see how it would look, when he looked like a menacing silhouette I insisted that he do a threatening pose, the hilarious result can be seen below. We tried a few more time to recreate the shot but with the look of terror on the model’s face, unfortunately she couldn’t stop giggling and the subsequent photos weren’t as good as the first.
And regular looking people photos, like Danny who was a natural in front of the camera with his clearly rehearsed Harris Scarfe catalogue poses.
We even managed to get a semi decent shot of one of the less photogenic people going round, even if it is a bit cheesy.
All round a great experience, I was like a sponge taking it all in as it was all so new. I know enough now to book a few hours in a studio and have a play around, if I ever get round to this rest assured you can see the results here at www.simonbills.com.
Off to do a baby shoot this afternoon which should be great, until next time.
