LE News and Info - Monday, January 4, 2010 9:08 - 6 Comments

24 Examples of Emotional Lighting from the LE Flickr Pool

Photograph by Evan Romine.

At least they strike me as being lit with the ‘feeling’ or ‘mood’ of the photograph foremost in mind. I have made some notes on what intrigued me about each of the images. They will get the ol’ juices goin’ for thinking about light before we think about the gear.

Each of these images seem to hold a bit of a cinematic view… shadows that are un-mitigated, soft light contrasted with contrasty light, a ‘natural’ feel that may not be natural light, but with the warmth and subtleties that draw one in. (BTW… take a look at the pool at LE Flickr… there are a lot of great images there, and this choice in no way is meant to slight the other images there.) This post comes right after the post on “Emotional Lighting”, a recent Rant.

You know, I do workshops all over the country, and some selected dates out of the country. I meet so many great photographers and beginning shooters and models and just great people where ever I go. One of the reasons I am so optimistic about the future of photography are the people I meet at the workshops. Dedicated, interested, invested, committed, and creative, there are some terrific people pursuing this wonderful art of imaging.

I also hope to see some of you at the workshops this year. We are keeping them very reasonably priced, and very exciting. New curriculum, challenges and examples to work through. More media, more notes, more hands-on. If you are thinking about a workshop this year, I hope you consider mine. Checkout Learn to Light for more information. We will be coming more into line with a lot of other workshops next year, but for now my goal is to meet and work with as many small groups as I can.

There is a lot to think about this year. Some people are saying the recession is over. I am not so sure, but I don’t feel it tanking as fast as it was. We have to be nimble and able to create more channels of income into our pockets as professional photographers. Does that mean that commercial guys start doing weddings or wedding photographers branch out into industrial? Maybe. Does it mean we all have to start shooting video? No, of course not. Should we be investigating the new tools including video? Oh… yeah, we most definitely should.

If you think things changed fast last decade, hold on to your butts. Change will come more rapidly and on more fronts than in the oughts, and that is certain. We need to be nimble and we need to adapt to the changes. Are you dabbling in social media? You better be… or it will change so fast and the learning curve / ‘buy-in’ capital will be so high that it could be ten times as daunting as it is now. Read TechCrunch for some ideas of what is coming. Social media for the enterprise and filtered for content delivery by Google and Yahoo? Yeah. If you don’t know what that means, you need to find out. It affects us all in small business.

I hope you join in and become active in taking the idea of photography by the horns. Tackle the Ideas of lighting, the nuances of lighting, and how they all tie in to posing and gesture. Both grand and small, gesture is what makes the image speak to the viewer. Even the lack of gesture is a gesture in its own right.

The 24 images you are about to see come from the Flickr Lighting Essentials Pool. I hope you join us there for more discussions, a picture sharing forum, and a chance to meet and talk to some incredible peers. We aren’t about any one kind of light, we have no mantra other than to make great photographs, and for the most part we’re pretty darned nice.

Be sure to check out the Going Pro category and if you are looking for the shorter, one page posts, hit Rants & Raves. In the recent post on “Emotional Lighting” -the one that proceeded this one, there are some links to photographers that will inspire you. Also see the “8 Essential Sites for Emerging Professional Photographers” for some places to bookmark.

Now let’s go see the images and be sure to visit the photographer’s Flickr sites after the jump.

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