MissAniela

Portrait lighting at Studio Time

Disclaimer: my amateur studio pictures are by no means groundbreaking whatsoever!

Using lighting creatively has always fascinated me since I started photography. However, my treatment of lighting has always been largely arbitrary, or at least, spontaneous. Most of my images use natural light. Only since last July have I started to use flashguns in my images, and that hasn’t been often, as I’m still getting used to incorporating them into my practice. One of the main reasons why I have started using them was due to the poor quality I often get by using in natural light indoors. This would be noticeable either in the visual results, ie. something not being as well lit as it could be, or, it might look good, but noisy, and have its prospects for large-scale printing scuppered or compromised. Whether or not one thinks I have used natural lighting effectively in my images, I have yet to fully understand how to harness light; I take advantage of light whilst it does what it wants, sometimes without fully understanding, from a technical viewpoint, what I did well (or not).

Studio lighting is an area I have very little experience in. What happens then, when someone like me, who is largely used to using candles, lamps, and the sun, and often a reliance on Photoshop to enhance certain lighting effects, is thrown into a class on studio lighting? I attended Studio Time’s ‘Portrait Lighting’ day workshop a couple of weeks ago. Studio Time are based at two studios in London, one in Barking, Essex, and one at London Fields, where my course took place. The London Fields studio itself, contained within an old Victorian warehouse, is hired by professionals for both TV and photography shoots. The courses mainly run on Fridays and Saturdays, by Tony Thornton and Martin Gomez. Each course has a maximum of 8 students  though the studio also offers one-to-one tuition.

The day started at 10.30am after tea and biscuits. There were 7 other students on this occasion, and the model, Kristina Pereckaite. After introducing ourselves, we were introduced to the equipment: the umbrellas, softboxes, grids, flash meter, etc… and we all set our cameras up with the appropriate manual settings for shooting with studio flashes. We also did a custom white-balance on our cameras using the grey card.

We discussed lighting ratios, lighting key, lens choice for shooting studio portraits, soft and hard lighting, and backgrounds. These were all to come into play through the various lighting plans we worked on through the day. We started off with what is known as ‘Rembrandt lighting’, with a straightforward one-light set-up, a good all-round portrait light which casts a light onto one half of the face, with an optional gold reflector to slightly fill the shadows on the other side.

A variation on this effect is ‘Edge lighting’, a side light shot, where an umbrella light is placed on one side of the model. Tony discussed ‘fat’ and ‘thin’ lighting with regards to this set-up – how the lighting here can serve to either fatten or ‘thin down’ the model’s face as appropriate.

We moved onto ‘butterfly’ or ‘paramount’ lighting, which is suitable for high-key lighting set-ups to create a dramatic catch light. This one particularly suited the very fair, blonde model Kristina, and I liked it more than the last lighting set-up for the way it lit the model’s eyes well.

The background in the last shots was grey. What we wanted to do now was learn how to make a white background, a set-up which is harder to achieve than it might seem. Whilst some photographers pile into a studio and blast the background with the brightest, most nuclear light they can, hoping to effortlessly achieve a white background, and instead having lots of post-work to do to correct it, we were shown how to do it properly. In setting it up correctly, you can achieve images that have a perfect white background suitable for fashion and catalogue, and to reduce time in Photoshop in preparing these images. Two lights were set up at 45 degrees pointing at the white background, both to the same power output. We needed a flat and even flood of light and we were shown how to achieve this with the light meter and by adjusting the stops accordingly to slightly over-expose the image.

These, again, suited the model Kristina! We learnt how to use this effect both to create shadows, and to eliminate them.

The course was very hands-on, with the students helping the tutor to set up the shoot, to gain direct experience with handling the equipment, rather than just playing the spectator role. I was particularly happy to ingratiate myself with a light meter, a tool of which I had no previous experience. Even just having chance to screw and unscrew the lights from their stands and attachments was enlightening and made me feel closer to being able to navigate a studio for myself.

The tutor would take pictures of the model in each set-up, with their camera tethered to their computer, which displayed the images instantly in Lightroom, for the students to observe.

Also, importantly, each student hooks up their DSLR to the lights (either via the USB or by speedlight) and has the opportunity to pose the model to capture shots in each different lighting scenario, and see for themselves the effects that can be achieved.

During all of this, it was interesting to note the difference between the look of the image on the tutor’s LCD screen and their computer, and also, the difference between the look of our images on all of our different camera LCD screens! We did not just learn how to operate equipment – we also got a sense of the reality of photography, and valuable advice on pursuing one’s photography profession: for example, on the most useful equipment to buy, and the equipment that is best to hire.  The tutors were highly experienced, having years of commercial photography under their belts, and were able to offer advice on all aspects of the shooting in a studio, as well as give full and articulate answers to any questions we had.

We moved onto low-key lighting, creating ‘film noir’ style images using a main light, and light fills from behind, to achieve a glow on the hair of the model.

We also looked at how to use colour gels to cast a colour onto the background of a set-up without casting the colour onto the model. This was particularly interesting, as I recalled all the times I have altered the colour of something in Photoshop. This was all achieved within the shooting with one simple £3 gel sheet over the light!

The course did make me consider the differences between the background of the tutors, and my own background. I got into photography largely because of Photoshop and its possibilities, whereas Tony and Martin have a darkroom background (but now fully embrace digital). Our values regarding shooting and processing were similar, however. They aim to keep post-production down to a minimum, and in principle, so do I. However, although I do not aim from the outset of my shoots, as such, to use Photoshop extensively on my images, I find it often does happen. Sometimes better lighting or preparation would have saved that time in Photoshop, sometimes not. However, it also depends on your view – there is no right or wrong. For example, one person might think that putting a green gel over their light, as above, is preferable to changing the cast in post-editing, others might disagree and prefer to play around in Photoshop to make that change later. Both take some time to do  – arguably the Photoshop way would take longer, and photographers generally like to reduce the time they spend on their computers.

I do already advocate for getting a shot as close to your intention in the shooting (though I also celebrate the times when I completely transform an image, unexpectedly). This course did make me feel stronger that I want to achieve more in the shooting process, because if that is possible, the quality of an image is usually better.

After having been happily acquainted with some key, basic lighting set-ups in this introductory course, I was wondering, throughout, how best to take these new-found technical skills into what I do. In my own photography, I have started out with the creative side of photography and then pursued learning the technical side. I do believe that’s the best way to start, rather than starting technically competent but with no artistic ideas, as there is so much competition out there, and countless people learning the ’skills’. It still is challenging, though, to look at a portrait (like the ones above that I’ve shot) and turn that moment: the model, the set-up, the lighting, into ‘my’ work. I don’t see them as remotely artistic, especially as I was only a student who did not set up the shots independently. I am still debating where the ‘art’ of photography lies. I don’t believe it lies in a single place, and certainly not in a technique that one is taught. However, learning the skills is a necessary platform to being able to reach up and grab those ideas, utilise the tools to be able to make them real. I am thankful for how the day showed me things I will can try out right now with my flash guns and umbrellas, as well further thing I can experiment with, once I get access to more studio equipment.

I stayed on for the next day’s course, Advanced Fashion and Beauty Lighting, on which I’ll also be doing a write-up. Also, during the second course, I had somewhat a Eureka moment when I saw how the artistic side of shooting in a studio begins to develop. Stay tuned!

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Studio Time runs courses on DSLRs, fashion and portrait, and creative lingerie shooting. It also offers one-to-one tuition and studio model days in which you can book slots to shoot the model. You can read all about the courses and check out the dates for the next courses here.

More general info on hiring the studio here.

Thanks to Tony and Martin.

Tags: course, fashion, lighting, london, london photography courses, portrait, studio, studio time

Posted in Serious stuff, Tutorials/'making of' on March 19th, 2010 | 19 Comments | Tweet This!