#barebulb

Following the overcast London sky look, I wanted to revisit creating sunlight in studio. I hit on this back in Week 5, but what Gregory Heisler is doing here is way different than the Emma Summerton picture I worked on then.

Orlando Diaz-Azcuy by Gregory Heisler

This idea of using a bare bulb to create a sun-like light is great. This picture came from a book of Heisler’s work called 50 Portraits (highly recommended). In it, he shows his pictures and then explains what went in to the shoot, including some technical descriptions. For this chapter he states very simply, “So how does one replicate high noon sunlight in the tropics? It’s a surprisingly easy task.... All that’s required is just a simple naked light, as high and far away as possible. Even better if it’s bouncing off the white walls and floor in a typical photographer’s studio.” (pg. 74). The only thing I would add is that it’s critical that the flashtube “sees” the subject in order to get the really hard shadow. If the light is tilted up so that the light housing blocks the flashtube and all the light is reflected, you get slightly softer shadows—like on a day with strong sun and weak clouds.

For my picture, I was getting a lot of wrap from the seamless background, so I blocked that light with a black v-flat. I then added in a white card in front just to open the shadows a bit. It’s hard to tell if Mr. Heisler did that, or needed to. Depending on how white the room was, how close the walls were, etc. he may have had exactly what he needed without any grip. 

The last thing I did was add a catch light for they eyes. Mr. Heisler avoids the problem of not having enough light in the eyes with the subject’s direction and glasses. But I have been thinking lately about doing a picture where the eyes are totally dark except for a bright catch light. With the above set up, if the subject turns toward the camera, the right eye will be in shadow in a way that doesn’t really work for me. So I tried it. It opens the shadows a bit, though in this case the only catch you can see is the white card. Something to keep working on.

Source: 50 Portraits by Gregory Heisler, Amphoto Books

I kept delaying this picture, waiting on a gray day when the light outside looked like London light (where the image below was made). We actually had some days like that, but I didn’t have my ducks in a row when they came around and I let them slip away. Eventually, I decided I needed to just do it, so I set out to create Overcast Light in the studio.

Andrew Lincoln, by Ruven Afanador.

I follow Ruven Afanador on Instagram. He posted a bunch of pictures from this recent shoot, and this cover image stuck out. What I like about the picture from a lighting standpoint is how much the warm light from camera right helps the image. There is a ton of post-processing happening with the colors: the shadows are toned blue/purple, there’s almost a veil of magenta over the whole thing, and lots of desaturation. All that works in contrast to the warmth. If you saw this image right out of camera, you would probably be disappointed. And I love that.  

The best way I know to make overcast light is to place a big diffusion panel/scrim overhead and shoot light through it so that it falls evenly underneath. To eliminate the hot spot that would occur from the bulb you could 1) double scrim, 2) try an umbrella or soft box on the light, 3) use a bunch of lights, or 4) point the light toward a white ceiling and use that as a big bounce. I did #4. I could have used a bigger scrim. Mine is 3′x5′. A 12′x12′ with a couple of lights bouncing off the ceiling would have been ideal.

For the warm light, I put a reflector with grid to camera right. I gelled that strobe with a 1/2 CTO (CTO means color temperature orange, one of the standard color balancing gels used in film and photography production. Full CTO will balance a daylight bulb to tungsten. In this case, the gel was half as strong as a full CTO. This decision to use 1/2 CTO rather than a Full or 1/4 was eye-balled). The side light needed to be 2 stops under the key (overhead)—again, I just eye-balled this ratio. One thing I learned in process of shooting is that posture matters here. By tilting the head to the side, as in the Afanador image, you create a new shadow that the overhead light can’t “see.” That makes the side light more effective and allows for a more subtle touch. What’s ultimately key is balancing the exposures so that both lights convey the same brightness. The contrast, then, is made with color.

Mr. Afanador’s background is completely flat, whereas I got a gradient from top to bottom. I think it makes my picture more interesting (than it would be with even light) since I don’t have the bricks. 

One thing I love is that this set up is 2 lights, though it looks like 3-4 (with the background gradient). In most of these lighting set ups, I feel that more lights makes better light. You can make 3 lights looks like 1, but you can’t make 1 light look like 3. Except in the case of creating a cloudy day.

Source: Ruven Afanador for The Rake magazine

This is Rachael Roberts. She is a musician, bartender, photographer, traveler, and neighbor. She sat for me as I continued to think about using hard light sources to wrap a subject.

I spent a lot of time this week studying these Emma Summerton images. They look and feel like daylight but are obviously studio-made. The way the light wraps, the balance, the great shadows. I dig it. 

As I worked, I was playing with different ways to use a bare bulb and thought, what if I light the whole thing with bare bulbs? So I set to it. The bare bulb throws light everywhere and doesn’t have the fall off edge a reflector gives you. The sun is a giant bare bulb, if you will.

In my test images, I found a good set up with 5 lights. One over head, one side fill just behind the subject, one key maybe 20-30 degrees from the camera depending on the desired nose shadow, and two front fills. The trick, I discovered, was finding ways to eliminate shadows against the background that are naturally created any time you point a light at a subject. What’s fascinating to me about the Summerton images is how natural the shadows look even though they are being “filled” by the other lights that are illuminating her shadow side. By having the model right against the wall, every light source has to be attenuated to not cast another shadow. You can actually see a slight shadow variation in the left part of both images. The shadows on the stool are also telling. I will revisit this another time, but the simple solution is to move the subject off the background and raise the lights as needed to let the shadows fall to the ground.

When I set this shot back up in order to photograph Rachael, I ended up just using 4 lights because it worked better than my initial set up. 

This idea of using a bare bulb is really fascinating. I have tried it before, but as with much of what I’m learning through this blog, I had never really worked it out so that I could use it. The key is to wrap the subject, and deal with the shadows, in an interesting way. 

Thanks to Rachael for modeling!

Hair and Make Up by Joanna Ballentine who can be found at Irrelephant—thanks Joanna!