articles/Lighting/light-tour-page2

Lighting lab on tour - part 2 of 1 2 3 4 5

Published 01/08/2016

Now for this session I was away from my studio and out of my comfort zone. We'd only arrived in the hotel late the previous evening and dashed straight out for a meal, so I hadn't had the chance to scout potential locations. This really would be flying by the seat of my pants stuff.

I started by looking for some very neutral, natural light. For me it's the most essential part of the shoot. Your subject is nervous, you're probably a little nervous and it's a great opportunity to get some beautiful images very easily, calm the nerves and, more than anything, build up the rapport with your subject. Throw some jokes out, see where their humour lies, ask open questions to get them talking about themselves. Use active listening techniques to show that you're acknowledging what they're saying and ask questions based on information they are giving. If you get this part of the shoot right, everything else will fall into place around it. For the location I chose a walkway running underneath the hotel. The two open ends provided plenty of light and the hotel above masked it from direct sunlight.

This produces a great area of soft light to work in. Add a silver reflector to lift the shadows and we're good to go. Spot meter from the face at f2 on an 85mm lens and you get great skin tones.

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