Lighting How-Tos from the studio session on Sunday  – complete with crappy drawings!

Yes well, a great big thanks to all who attended the flash workshop on the weekend at Mejirodai Studio, we all had a great time and each learnt something new about shooting with flash. Models Teva and Gen did an absolutely superb job and were definitely responsible in a big part for the great photos.

In response to several requests to explain the lighting setups known for my shots I’ve decided to set up this weekly column which shall come out approximately once a month, and which I hope will shed some light (geddit!?) on how and why I place the lights as I do.

Let’s start with the lovely Teva.

The first thing you notice about Teva is that her skin is about as white and pure as un-driven snow. Wow.  It pretty much glows, even when she’s placed in shadow.

With this sort of opportunity (and yes, I consider good skin an opportunity), my first instinct is to hit her with straight-up beauty light.  I placed two white styrofoam boards directly in front of her and left a tiny gap in the middle for a lens to poke through. The idea here is to create a massive wall of light which will fill in any shadows on her face as well as create nice, even lighting.  Remember: the bigger the relative size of the light source, the softer it appears to look. The wall of styrofoam was pretty much death for shadows in this situation.

So I set up two strobes facing into each of the reflectors and bingo, instant beauty light.  Teva now looks like she’s straight out of an eyeliner commercial.

For an extra touch, I put an SB-800 on a boom above and slightly behind Teva’s head, gridded it with my darksphere, and set it to release a very small pop of light to give a bit of shine to Teva’s hair.

Here’s the lighting diagram, which was crafted with high-end drafting software that Japanorama acquired at ludicrous expense:

As far as the settings on my camera: ISO100  1/250sec, f/6.3, 135mm.  If I remember correctly the SB900 and 590EX were both at 1/4 power plus or minus 1/3 of a stop.  The gridded SB-800 was at around 1/32.

Next up, Gen.

Now while Gen doesn’t have the same luminous skin as Teva there’s still plenty in the bag to work with.  Particularly with men, I like to use restricted lighting as it helps to define the jawline, nose and eyebrows.

I’m also childishly obsessed with rim-light, which is the thin sliver of light separating Gen’s shoulders and neck from the black background. This is accomplished by simply pointing an SB-900 at the back of Gen’s head.

The main light is now my SB-800 with the gridded darksphere attached (my new favourite flash accessory), which is boomed just over the front of his face.  The grid keeps the light in a tight circle and doesn’t let it spill everywhere.

Once again, feast your eyes on a highly accurate and to-scale lighting diagram that was put together to exact standards using state-of-the-art software. The main thing to note about this setup is that the lights were both extremely close to our subject Gen. Working in close proximity affords the most control over light spillage and also saves battery power as a bonus.

My camera settings for the technically curious were: ISO200 1/250sec f/6.3, 35mm.  The lights were roughly around 1/16 power each, if I remember correctly.

To learn how to light, or if you just want to shoot photos of cool people, sign up to our mailing list on the top page to receive announcements and news of events and workshops that we organize.  For more details send us an email, at alfie@japanorama.co.uk or irwin.wong@japanorama.co.uk.