I Never Met A Light I Didn’t Like

“I’ve never seen any of the other Photographers use this many lights.” The Passer says as she looks at the extra light heads I have setting around the Studio.

“I like to have a little more control over how my images look.” I say

“Well, I can’t see much difference.  Except for the backgrounds.”

Some of the Passers know nothing about photography, some of them think they are photographers themselves, and some judge your photos by whether they sell or not.  Many of our customers don’t want anything fancy either, they just want flat lighting ike they get from the DMV or one of those photo booths at an amusement park.  This is easy enough to do, so I usually shoot a few that way.  But I also like to add a few more dramatic images, just in case they want something besides an ID shot for the obits.

I’ve read a lot serious books about lighting, from the science to the art of portrait lighting.  Many of the books talk about the differences between various light modifiers and offer examples of umbrella light, softbox light, grid light, and bare bulb light.  These pictures are often interesting, but difference in light from these sources is often so subtle as to be negligible in practice.  To add insult to injury the authors often add comments like-Wow! Look at the difference between a small softbox and a large softbox!  When I look at the samples and see virtually no difference at all.

This doesn’t mean there is no difference, only that the differences are seldom worth the trouble of setting up and tearing down often large and cumbersome modifiers on a sometimes daily basis.  Umbrellas are easy, and therefore umbrella win the Assembly Line Portrait world battle.  I have used Softboxes and I currently use Shoot Through Umbrellas to achieve a similar effect.

It is a bit discouraging when you hear a Subject complain that an image has too many shadows, when the whole point of the shot was to have a lot of shadows.  I also get people who don’t like the hotspots on a High Key Shot, where there are added white highlights on both sides of the face and the background is completely blowout to solid white.  It also doesn’t do any good to tell them that is the way it is supposed to look, because all they know is that it doesn’t met their idea of what a portrait should look like.  Nine time out of ten these are the same people who complain about the portraits looking exactly like the last set of portraits they had taken.  Stand issue damned if you and damned if you don’t.

So I end up lighting more for myself than for my Subjects.  The light still depends on the Subject, I don’t do Rim lighting on groups and I don’t do floor poses with ninety year old couples.  Some people want Contemporary Lighting, some want Lighting without shadows, most don’t really care one way or the other.  They are there for The Freebie, how we light it doesn’t matter all that much.

I know a couple of Photographers that never vary the lighting at all.  All their shots are lite the same way and they spend as little time as possible with the Subjects.  I spend a little more time than I used to, but I even with changes in the light setup on every shot, it doesn’t take all that long to shoot a couple or even a group of ten.  It takes a bit of work to get a group of twenty or more into place, but it is possible.  The lights need to be moved around for that and I usually add a couple of auxiliary lights to make sure everyone’s face shows up.

The best lighting pattern is the one that sells.  Of course, any lighting pattern can sell given the right conditions.   Most people want something extraordinary.   What most people get is good enough.  Some of the most interesting photographic portraits come from using just one light.  I usually shoot one or two shot in a sitting with one light.  This is how you create Butterfly lighting and Rembrandt Lighting and sculpt the face with the light.  Using one light can create the most stunning portraits.  If you feel like showing off, you can light both sides of the face and the background with just one light, but that kind of silliness always seemed to defeat the whole point to me.  Unless I was somehow limited to only one light, what’s the point?

My favorite photographer is George Hurrell of Hollywood Glamor fame.  He used a ton of lights, often just for one subject.  He then took that highly illuminated image and retouched until the imperfect actors and actresses took on the sheen of marble.  Lighting is only the first step in creating a perfect portrait.  While The Company does offer Retouching, the results I have seen are often not all that impressive.  It’s now too easy to smooth and blur and correct those small details that make us human.  But we sell a lot of retouching, so it is still a good thing.

And maybe reading all these books on portrait lighting has just increased my already deep lust for more gadgets I may not use and more light modifiers that I don’t yet know how best to use.  The desire for better softboxes and reflectors and girds and beauty dishes and so on and so forth only serve to make dissatisfied with what I do have to work with.  I have added a number of things to my Studio, but I have also met with a lot of failure when those things did not work as I had hoped they would.  Still, hope springs eternal and I have plans to make a few more things of my own and see how the results turn out.

I am working a bit, though not as much as I would like.  So I have the time to diddle around with a with DIY lighting projects.  Time I finished up that Beauty Dish and gave it a whirl.  And I have wanted to bang out a paper ring light as well.