one light wonders: a magazine + video shoot with just one light

AFS — Sun, 03 May 2009 22:30:43 +0000

So I am posting some unedited video clips from an editorial shoot from last year for SOMA magazine. The still shots have been on my photo web site for some time, and were in the 2008 Fall Fashion issue of the magazine. Theses will hopefully give some idea as to the lighting setup. I like to keep it simple, and on this particular day I used one light only. The lighting seen here is a Profoto strobe pack with one head inside of a 4×6 softbox with the two baffles removed, in order to give it a hard shadow – hopefully resembling sunlight. The model is one of my favorites – Juliana Imai at Ford Models. The assistant and video shooter was Arturo Sanchez. (we shot the video on a whim, as I had a Canon G9 sitting on my desk at the time…) Anyway, as I said, it’s unedited, a little jerky, and loud…but you can also see some of the excitement which can occasionally he had when you’ve got the right crew. (To be sure, most of my shoots are not quite as fun as this one was…)

Camera used for the stills was a Canon 1Ds mark III and lenses were the 85mm 1.2 and the 50mm 1.4.

(Of course, since we happened to be shooting video for all the web to see, the studio looks a shambles! But some of that mess is needed as you will read below…)

In these clips you can see the big black soft box to camera right, there are a couple black boards on the floor which are there to soak up some of the light so the shadows on the wall will go deeper black. Also, the black board on camera left at the back of thet set is there to make all of the shadows deeper – as we are in a small studio with white walls and a white ceiling, it’s very difficult to get dark shadows without the ugly black foam core boards scattered throughout

The below image is a fuzzy video still showing my setup for the SOMA shoot. Click it to enlarge it so you can read the labels which explain why the set is so cluttered

Untitled from afashionshooter on Vimeo.

afashionshooter.com SOMA clip 2 from afashionshooter on Vimeo.

Juliana tells them how it’s done from afashionshooter on Vimeo.

afashionshooter.com SOMA shoot – gorgeous Juliana 1271 from afashionshooter on Vimeo.

Either later today or tomorrow I will be posting several more clips…in the mean time, here’s what the stills looked like:

one light wonders – using a single light source in the studio

AFS — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 01:50:08 +0000

While admiring photographers who can handle many lights very well, like Joshua Jordan, I usually like to keep things on my sets as simple as possible. Why? Because I find that I feel freer to work with the talent when I am not thinking too much about equipment. Also when the lighting is more simple, the models can move around more freely without messing the whole thing up

Keeping it simple often that means using only daylight, or just one studio strobe – and maybe mix the one studio light with daylight. And often it means using a reflector or two. While it might sound limiting, it really isn’t. And if you are just starting to learn how to light things, or just like to travel light, it’s a good idea to explore all that can be done with one light source.

Using only the sun (daylight) is a good way to start. Everyone has taken photos using daylight, and everyone has seen some incredible images made using just the sun. The below gallery is all shot indoors with just daylight. Sometimes there was just one window, and in some cases there were multiple windows.

Seeing as you can do all these things with daylight inside, it should follow that one artificial light source in the studio could be just as be fruitful, no? Well, it can be. Soon I will post a few shots using single-source strobe lights (usually with large softboxes for diffusion.) I’ll do my best to describe exactly how I used them.

a (fashion) shooter » ford models

one light wonders: a magazine + video shoot with just one light

one light wonders – using a single light source in the studio