Alfie and Irwin take time out with Sayaka – with some interesting results…
Sez Sayaka: ‘I want a film-noir retro look, like that movie ‘In The Mood For Love”.
Nothing else to do but to bust out my lights and take her up a backalley.
And no, nothing rude was involved.
This would be an exercise in creating ‘moody’ light – in other words, hard, directed light. How does one do that?
Remember, the smaller the light-source is in relation to the subject, the harder it looks. It packs more of a punch over a smaller area and tends to throw hard shadows. This is important to keep in mind when aiming for hard light.
For a *really* good explanation of what that all means check out David Hobby’s post here if you haven’t already. Better still, read all of Lighting 101 and 102.
Now with that in mind, let’s take a look at what we shot in the dark alley that night.
Exhibit No. 1 by Alfie, lights by me.
This is what you would call a hero shot – one of the shots running double-truck inside a glossy movie booklet introducing the characters. The backdrop? Some backstreet in Shimbashi. You see the red splashing off the steel cabinet over there? That’s from a yakitori shop-front behind us. Found backdrops like these are always awesome. The lighting? 1 SB-900 zoomed to 200mm to camera right. 1 SB-800 to camera left pointed at the background to bring up the background a little.
Couldn’t be simpler, and with the right exposure the results are pretty damn nice.
One thing to watch though – spill. Check it out:
Here’s another photo without its makeup on. Do you see the blue highlight just by Sayaka’s elbow? That’s spill from the SB-900 on the right reflecting off the very shiny metal casing. The way to fix that? Use a flag to hide the side of the flash so the steel casing can’t see it. Wanna learn more? Look up specular highlights on strobist.com. I ain’t gonna explain it when it’s already been done so well 
Or come to a strobist class with Japanorama. We’ll learn ya.
.
Exhibit No 2 by Alfie, lights by me.
Once again, Alfie’s approach to this shot is to create a heroic character which he certainly has. Had some issues with the big neon sign to the right of her waist, but that’s another article for another time, and I’ll let Alfie deal with that one.
Same backalley, different angle. Check out the light on her face, because there are two things to note about it. Notice how none of it has gotten on her shoulder or jacket? That’s because I was using a tight gridspot positioned to target only her face (and hand – she had it in just the right position to catch the beam, bless her). Restricted light = Dramatic light. The other thing is the warm colour tone of her skin. Strobe light is balanced to white, and can look a little vampirish against a dark scene. For a close-up shot like this I banged a CTO (that’s Colour Temperature Orange) gel over the strobe head to give her a bit more colour. The devil’s in the details.
Wanna learn how to shoot like this? Japanorama has a strobist workshop planned for the 31st of May – if you want to join up, contact us! Spaces are pretty much filled but..we’ll see what we can do.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:52 am
Yes, nice pictures, nothing to say about that… but the first one, in pure available light, in my opinion, has much more of the “mood” you talk about than the other two.
Pointy light sources, made highly directional by snooting and/or gridding them, in my opinion don’t work so well in the other two pictures. Exhibit n.1 works well enough because of the juicy red reflection in the back, but i find all the extra bluish reflections on the bicycles distracting. Maybe the second strobe should have been aimed at her legs, maybe a stop or two less than her face, and I would have softened this second source light to give just a little more volume to the shape of her legs (after all those are the sexy element of the image, aren’t they?). A couple of CTO would have helped to reduce the ghostly appearance of her face, and maybe half a stop less light on the face as well, but that might just be might taste… the red light in the back sets the mood and the whiteness of the light on her ruins it in my humble opinion.
Regarding Exhibit n.2, I don’t think it works… lighting is ok, but again a little too strong. I always feel that the hardest part of learning how to use strobes is to learn to not overdo what you are going for. In my opinion there is too much light on her face and hand and not enough shadows. This makes her face look flat and is not very flattery (no pun intended). Maybe you should have raised you light more? After all you are trying to create a film-noir mood, but lights in a halley usually don’t come from such a low angle… I think a good idea is to have some sort of pole with the strobe attached at its end so you can get more creative and reduce the deer in the headlights effect…
Her pose is fantastic but all that light ruins it in my opinion. The CTO was a good idea, but i would have used maybe a second one.
Also in this second image I think the bottom right white sign is a little distracting… maybe moving the camera slightly to the left to cover the hiragana characters and leave just some of that light to silhouette her figure would have helped.
All this, of course, is just my humble opinion. Feel free to disagree with me. But I hope you accept the constructive criticism.
Ciao. FG
May 22nd, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Francesco, Your opinion – humble or not – is always gratefull received. I respect your work, sir.
This was also just a test-shoot, to try some things out and learn from it all.
As for the square shot, see my notes here. I agree:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alfiegoodrich/3551104472/
As for the available light/atmosphere feelings you express, I think my response is best dealt with by referring you to this page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alfiegoodrich/3550739691/
….I am re-learning flash after many years away from it. I am, as you know and as I say on that second link, an available-light boy at heart.
Well, the ‘boy’ part is a slight bending of the truth, but the rest stands
Alfie
May 22nd, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Thanks for taking it so well. You know, I didn’t even see the car distracted by the sign… but isn’t it amazing how all these details are almost invisible to us when we look through the viewfinder?
I read somewhere that a photographer has so many things to “see” and think about when shooting that our brains tend to simplify the scene for us, removing the clutter… which works against us since we really should be more careful about clutter.
this is actually one of the reasons why they say that shooting with large format cameras helps because when we look at a scene upside down and in “2D” on the large viewfinder, that function of the brain turns off and we work essentially in the same way as when in front of a computer screen… we can “see” the clutter and see better the geometric composition of shapes and colors.
Oh well, I am not trying to tell you to use large format, but maybe you can consider medium format with a waist level viewfinder (similar effect, 2D image, flipped left/right –> better ability to compose and see clutter and shapes)… plus you would love the sync speed at 1/500, won’t you?
Ahhh… where would we be without a little of camera lust (with good reasons of course, hehehehe)
Good night, my friend, thanks for the interesting article (thanks to both you and Irwin) and for the conversation that has come out of it…
May 22nd, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Great article – couple of points from me.
1. Agree with FG that the first shot is the most similar to In the Mood for Love. Not only are the colours more similar, I think the pose is perfect. The look she has (as if thinking about someone) is perfect.
2. Would be interesting to see a picture of the lighting set up next time, with notes explaining key features and decisions you made.
Cheers
CK.
May 24th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Charlie,
I have been a Strobist group moderator for quite some time and I have to disagree with your request for diagrams. Just looking at a diagram really wouldn’t help much.
First of all the diagram is going to be most likely from the top, in 2D, and what really matters in my opinion are the angles, the vertical height and all tiny modification that are given to the light by flagging/combing/snooting/softening it with various light modifiers.
Lighting is a pretty intuitive game and the best ways to learn how to do it is just to try it yourself (especially with digital which allows immediate feedback) and to participate in small group workshops. I personally learned more from a few hours of workshop than watching a gazillion images on the strobist pool.
On the other hand, AFTER you have practiced a little, watching images like the above will be always a great source of inspiration and you will be soon able to spot most light sources (you might miss little detail lights)…
In essence, what I am trying to say is that:
1) Lighting is not as hard as it looks like (especially when you use a digital camera to practice)
2) Lighting is pretty intuitive (especially if you have ever played pool)
3) Workshops are usually an eye-opening experience and a lot of fun
4) After you learn a little lighting techniques and you try them out, you won’t be able to look at a magazine picture the same way anymore — your brain will immediately scan for light sources and clues about possible light modifiers
5) Lighting is a lot of fun!
May 29th, 2009 at 8:55 am
I think to get the Kar Wai Look – you have to stop using strobos
… and get to tungsten 
all the picture except first one looks unbalanced from the view of the light. especially the last one. her face is popping out! the pic is flat. i don`t know, propably the grid was not enough. you had to bounce it from somewhere…
hard, directed light is not always “moody” light
. its just hard and directed. ^_^