Lighting How To

When I realized that this column would be in the magazine’s lighting focus issue, I looked at the data for the photos I’d taken earlier this year during a nearly month-long combination of safari workshop, assignment, and stock shoot in Africa. What I found surprised me: I’d used flash on about one-third of the 13,000 photos I’d made on that trip. I had no idea I’d used my Speedlights as often as I had.

You enter a room bustling with activity. You see models posing in front of photographers on two different sets, other models patiently sitting getting their makeup and hair done, lights and modifiers everywhere, while one petite woman seems to be in charge of this organized chaos. Welcome to a workshop with one of the premier glamour and fashion shooters of our day, Lou Freeman.

Ray Demski captured this dramatic image sequence of Olympic Beach Volleyball gold medalist Jonas Reckermann in the Canary Islands for Red Bull. “I wanted to show the entire movement of Jonas Reckermann’s jump serve in a single image,” Demski told Shutterbug.

Studio lighting hardware is going through the biggest change—a paradigm shift, really—since the flashbulb was invented in 1929. There are many trends and fads with LED’s popularity seemingly having equal parts of both. LED lighting also appeals to DSLR and mirrorless camera shooters who want to capture stills and video.

The flash bracket has become the “forgotten accessory” in photography but it’s still an essential tool if you’re looking to achieve consistent studio-quality lighting on the fly.

Low light photography requires technical discipline to get the kind of pictures you want. Obviously artistry is also part of the equation, but shooting when the light is reduced presents technical problems that can only be dealt with using technical solutions.

The studio lighting genie is not going back into the bottle anytime soon and LED light sources are finding their place in more and more camera rooms. Clever and versatile lighting systems such as Rotolight’s new Anova V2 and their compact RL48-B battery-powered portable lights are part of the reason why.