Lightning for portraits

[cjbroadbent]

My posts usualy run against accepted practice, but here goes again.

You can do it all with one umbrella just to the side of the camera (traditionally, the left side). And remember: You don't light a sitter. The sitter lights herself.

No back-light/hair-light, no cheek reflections on the off-side - these ugly practices look cheapo and compensate for bad separation of tones behind the sitter.

If your shots look like Penn's you are on the right track.

The single umbrella simulates a window light. It has two easily remediable defects.
1. It gives too much light on the lower near side of the sitter, so fix that by aiming it straight, not downwards.
2. It gives too much light on the near side of the background, so fix that by aiming it straight across the sitter and not towards the background.
These two remedies work when the lamp-head is well inside the edge of the umbrella and when the lamp-head makes no spill.

So there you are with the near side of the sitter lit, aginst a darker background and the far side of the sitter dark and against a lighter background. If you want to be subtle, give the tonal extremes to the sitter and a lesser tonal range to the background.
To make life easier, I paint, and carry around a background which is darker on the left and lighter on the right.

Now for the nice part. Watch the shadow under the nose. Watch the 'butterfly' light on the far cheek. Turn the face into the light. Turn the face away from the light.
How much detail you have in the shadow tends to set the mood and depends on the ambient bounce (read Leonardo DaVinci on penumbra - he sorted that out 500 years ago).

Any flash head that gives you f8 out of the umbrella is good. I shoot 4x5 portraits at f22 with 2,400Ws generator. I could get by with a 500Ws monolight at f8. But a 2,000w Kobold HMI (heavy stuff) only gives me f6.3 for 1 second. If you like shooting wide open and slow, you are going to waste a lot of shots to bad focus and movement.

[Frank Petronio]

Listen to Christopher. At the very least, his advice will save you money and give you distinctive portraits.

I use a couple of hot lights and often shoot ISO 400 film at f/5.6 and 1/60th second. It works well enough for me but my pictures are mediocre, out of focus crap ;-)

I think for learning (which never stops) hot lights and a digital camera are the best. Too many people get strobes and never really learn to see the light, they just point the strobes and hope they get acceptable - but never ideal - results.

[fredludv]

This is very interesting, reading how you work and your opinions! Many thanks. Feel free to post some photographs aswell and maby a little info with that on how you lit it...
Kind regards / Fredrik

[fredludv]

Hey Frank, in my eyes they are indeed very interesting and ... exiting. Not often to see in portraits.

[otzi]

There are two ways of seeing. Start in a well lit space and add shadow or in a dim place and reduce shadow with reflectors or power. Its shade and shadow that gives you the modeling so often touted. Before you light up your life practice seeing, when no one is looking shut one eye to cancel the parallax thing. Gradually squint to reduce aperture using the lashes to slowly cut out more light till eventually the seen image is B+Wish. See how the shadows rather than light start taking a greater influence in the image composition. Experienced photogs do this unconsciously in scene evaluation.

You will see pictures in magazines of location shoots with lights, reflectors and enough cables to wire a city. There are two main reasons, 1– some one else is paying and 2– some one else is carrying all this stuff. Impression is at times more important than the doing.

There is great satisfaction in creating a pleasant portrait with one light source or reflector. Study old art where simplicity of shadow reduction is evidenced. It's handy to have some one on a swivel stool move around as you watch the effect, often only requiring a slight movement.

[Peter De Smidt]

Oops. In my earlier post I talked about Speedotron 4303 packs. That should've been 4803 packs. Sorry. Haven't had coffee yet.

[Ben Syverson]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Strobist yet... It's mostly about using small hotshoe speedlights, but all the ideas are applicable to larger lights as well. Besides, I've taken plenty of LF shots lit with just one Nikon SB-26... It doesn't give you a lot of options when it comes to your f/stop, but it does work...

[Bjorn Nilsson]

Lots of good advice, but reading Christophers advice is probably the best advice yet. I.e. start with learning one light.
By the way, take a moment to look at Christophers pictures. Very nice studio work indeed.

//Björn

[cowanw]

Hey Frank, in my eyes they are indeed very interesting and ... exiting. Not often to see in portraits.

I don't find them exiting. I want to stay and look at them.
Regards
Bill

[fredludv]

Thanks all for the advices.

Christopher, I read your post a few times now and realize that your advice are exactly what I needed. Thanks for pointing me in that direction.