Everything reflects. That is something you will hear me say all the time. Whether at the workshop or working one on one with a photographer, one of the most important things to drive home is that everything reflects. Skin, silver, blue sweaters… they all reflect, but at obviously different qualities.

In this photograph we wanted a very deep shadow to create more mystery around the already mysterious image. The model with luscious lips emerging from behind the mask. In my mind, I wanted her to be emerging from the darkness as well. The mask is very glossy, so I knew a large, liquid highlight was called for so that the curves of the mask and her face would be smooth and soft.

Using a large softbox very close to the subject provided a large reflection of the source on the mask, her fingernails and her skin. This light, quite powerful, also provided some fill on the shadow side of her face because it simply lit up the wall. Even thought the wall was quite a distance from her, the fact that her skin reflected the light on the wall was problematic. It also provided a nice kick of reflection on the mask… one that I didn’t want.

To mitigate the reflection and increase the contrast I hung a 6′x6′ black cloth just to the right of the image and in as close as possible. This black cloth provided two qualities: it blocked the light from hitting the wall, and more importantly, it gave the skin and the mask something dark to reflect.

I essentially ‘subtracted’ the light from the shadow side of the image. Please note that there is no Photoshop on this image to darken or ‘burn’ that area in. The transparency is perfectly black and the contrast is as you see in the image.

You will notice that just on the edge of the mask as it disappears into the darkness, there is a little edge light going on. That is caused by the ribbon catching the light and creating a little fill of its own. I thought it was very subtle and added to the image by providing a point of diminution… where the final vestiges of the mask and the subject go into total shadow. Sometimes little things can really make the shot come alive. Look for them in your shots.

(I shot this on a 4×5 view camera, but you can do the same thing with any camera setup.)

This shot is another subtractive lighting still life. It was shot for a client who wanted the feeling of strength for their software tools. The theme was bodybuilding and they came up with the idea of a body builder with light coming in from the side. Yeah. Never seen that before. I pushed for a still life and they said go ahead and shoot it cause they could use it for something else if they didn’t use it for the brochure cover.

The light in this case is quite different. I will explain and add a diagram to show how different it is. I call it edge light or feathered light. The camera is focused down on the still life which is an old rusted weight, some weight lifting gloves and chalk that they use for working with the iron. All is on a 4×4 sheet of ‘stone’ slate. The camera in this case is a Deardorff 8×10 with a 375MM lens. Shot at f32 I would have loved another stop, but this was optimal for what we could do.

Diagram of setup:

You can see where the dark shadows play at the right side of everything. Deep and mysterious, they help create the drama. It also creates a nice light for revealing texture. Whether it is the leather or the slate background, the textures make the shot richer and more interesting. Notice the white chalk. I deliberately placed it on the far side from the light so that it wouldn’t be too bright or lose texture. The addition of the black subtractive card increased the contrast. Without the subtractive, there was nearly no texture in that lump of chalk.

When I delivered the shot, I made a presentation holder with the 8×10 transparency mounted in it. (I always shoot two sets of transparencies or more on shots like this.) The client went nuts. They ended up making some really cool large wall graphics and I shot 3 more similar still lifes for them. They tripled the shoot fee and it was a nice job. Oh, and I didn’t have to shoot some bodybuilder dude with the side light.

Recommended:
I keep a 4x4ft square of black cloth with me in my kit. It comes in handy on many shoots where there is a little glare to be knocked down, or I need to darken an area or do a little subtractive lighting. It packs very small, and can be invaluable… oh, and it is big enough to do a headshot against black on location if you need it. And a little bit of speedlight and ambient light mixed against a dark background can be very dramatic.

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I thought it may be fun to feature some of the shots and student work from these workshops. It will be an ongoing feature and as I see some images from the students, I will post with some lighting info.


Jeff Keen (Bliss Portraits) shot this image of Stacia in the stairwell of Lynne’s studio. There was a lot of light spilling into the stairwell from the front of the building, but it got quite dark toward the top of the stairs. Jeff used a speedlight and bounced it into the hall in front of Stacia, high and to camera left. It was on 1/16th power and only offered a very small amount of flash. Jeff chose to shoot at the correct exposure of the flash and let the ambient light flood into the space and warm the shot.

Next up is Roel’s shot of Stacia in the road in front of Lynne’s studio. Part of the challenge is to make a shot when there is no shot to be had. The road was mundane, but we used a wide angle lens to create drama and then “Beat the Sun” by two stops and lit Stacia with speedlights. This effectively underexposed the ambient and gave it almost a ‘night’ look to the image. Creating the lighting on Stacia, we made her stand out as the subject and ‘hero’.

Roel used two matching speedlights and they were on the voice-activated boom stands (Jeff and I). We kept the lights focused on her face and close enough to provide the f22 we needed at 1/200. We had the speedlights dialed down to 1/8 power on each.

Here you can see the lighting that Jeff had used for the stairwell shot above as it applied to Roel’s headshot. Roel (Roel Photo) was using the same light, as Jeff, but zoomed in with a tight take on Stacia’s face. You can see how nice the ambient adds some sculpting and nice highlights along the edges of her face.

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Jeff (Bliss Portraits) is up again with this shot of Nikki taken in a small dressing room. We used a single hot light (Home Depot, $11) and lit her against the blinds and the lit wall behind her. This shot features a slight spotlight look because the light is so close to her. Jeff simply dialed it in with his LCD, and had it nailed in a just a few shots. Photoshop was used to add a little bit of illustrative look to the image.

Will Brenner shot Stacia in the street as well, but we pulled the camera right flash to a different angle, only grazing her left side. This gives the image a side lit look. He added to the look with some Photoshop magic, giving it a more illustrative look. While similar to Roel’s, it has its very own look.

Roel (www.roelphoto.com) just sent an image of Jenny that looks simple, but there is a lot of stuff going on here. Jenny is sitting in Lynnes office with a lot of windows facing south. The light was beautiful and plentiful, but also very directed from the window side. We added a strobe bouncing into a large reflector over and slightly in front of Jenny to open the shadows while letting the ambient light dominate. Roel chose to drag the shutter to bring in the makeup lights behind Jenny.

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Getting really nice, soft light on location can be a challenge. Too often photographers use their naked flashes for fill and end up with something more harsh than they expected. Using a flash to fill in ambient light can be far more subtle and rewarding.

For this shot of my daughter, I used a large white umbrella and a 430EZ flash with remote triggers. To the right side of her I used a bright fill card. Let’s examine how easy it is to get this clean, non flash look.
(Our March Review is here.)

I looked for a place where the sunlight was coming through the large park trees and giving me some dappled areas for Alissa to sit in. This keeps her out of the bright sunny areas which can cause too much fill coming up from the ground. Essentially she is in the shade with a little bit of sun on her shoulders and neck. This is a comfortable area for your model to sit in as well.

I did a quick meter of the sunlight falling on her head at 1/100 of a second. I choose that as a starting point whenever there is sunlight. My ISO is normally set to 100 as well. 1/100 also allows my flash to sync and I can go up a stop easily to 1/200 if I need to.

The meter gave me f5.6. I wanted the light to be a bit more ‘poppy’ so I settled on f5 (a 1/3 stop overexposure of the backlight) and got my flash ready.

I have pre-measured my flash and umbrella combination and knew that at 3 feet it would give me f5.6 at 1/8 power at ISO 100. I made sure it was zoomed to ’24mm’ which gives the widest coverage of the umbrella, and set the flash at 3 feet. Since I was shooting at f5, I simply moved it back6 inches and shot a test shot. Perfect. Pre-measuring your light can be quite a time saver. I would use string or cord for a few months, eventually you will become an expert at gaging the distance.

Below you can see a side by side comparison of the top of the head. note that they are practically the same. The exposure for the ambient is not affected by the strobe. I am only filling the shadow areas with light to bring the face up to exposure with the ambient.

I generally take a shot or two without the flash to make sure that the ambient and direct backlight are what I want to begin with. Here is a shot without the flash or fill card:

Here is the shot with the strobe in the umbrella and the fill card in close on the camera right side. You can see the umbrella and fill card in the eyes. I make sure that the eyes have a nice look to them by bringing in the sources and ‘opening’ the eyes instead of distant pinpoints of source light.

I have created a to scale setup diagram. You can see that the flash is close to 3 feet away. It is also tipped very slightly to fill the top of the head as well as the face. Slightly being the operative word here.

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Client expectations:
1. Shoot 30 earrings (silver, gold, translucent and opaque stones).
2. Earring images must be on a pure white background.
3. Full earring must be visible, including ear hook/stud/etc.
4. Some earrings dangle, and must appear to be hanging.
5. No cast shadows on the background.
6. Avoid Photoshop (Lightroom is OK)


From Josh:
“I had a table and softbox arranged to give me a well lit place to shoot the jewelry. The softbox offered a very soft, and smooth main light source. Under the softbox, sitting on the table was a white, translucent plastic bin (the open end facing the camera). Across the open end of the bin, I stretched plastic wrap. I stuck the earrings through the plastic wrap, and even though there were a lot of stretch marks, holes, and rips, none of them showed up in the photo. No post processing needed. Then I draped a white sheet over the whole thing to make a light tent, and shot all 30 pieces the same way.

As you can see, the whole piece is visible and they look like they are hanging The pure white background is clean and without shadow. Laying them on a surface would have resulted in tiny shadows and mounting them from behind with rod or stick would have been a painstaking long approach. And with some of these items being so tiny, it would have been almost impossible to hide a stick in the shots. Additionally, by using plastic wrap instead of a fishing line, the pieces were held steady, with no swinging, so there were no problems with blur from motion or focus errors.”

At Lighting Essentials we love it when a clever approach comes up and is well executed. Thanks Josh. You can visit Josh at his web site: Joshua Targownik | www.targophoto.com
Here’s another look at how well this worked for Josh… and his client. I like the clean look of the jewels as well as the subtle highlights that give the earrings shape and context. These will look great printed large or small on the web.

Below Josh shares his lighting scheme with you. He is using an IKEA tray to hold the plastic wrap and provide the white background. The larger box gives a nice clean backlight and he is using a speedlight below the box to add just a little kick of light from the opposite direction to make sure the white stays clean. Take a shot at it the next time you need to do some earrings, rings, jewels or other kinds of still life. I can think of lots of uses for this kind of setup. You can see all the shots Josh did for his client here.

NOTE: It is important to note that Josh covered the entire set with a white cloth (sheet or other white material) that is not shown on the diagram. That material was critical in making sure there was light on the front of the jewelry as well. It draped down in front of the jewelry and in front of the camera. Do not forget this critical piece of the setup when you create it for your setups.

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I used a staple of lighting that I use on head shots: One large soft box and lots of fill cards. I control the contrast with V-Cards or fill cards and change up the background as I like.

I added a shiny panel to the area below her and angled to catch some of the light from the softbox. This little ‘kicker’ light adds a nice snap to the skin and under chin area. The softbox is to the left of camera and the V-Card fill is to camera right. I have a large fome core panel behind her and in pretty close for the background. This is a shot from that setup:

Here is a setup shot. This shot shows the dark background. I had removed the background fome core so we could do some dark background shots.

As I was adding the white background card I noticed how gorgeous the light was as she turned to look at me. I quickly grapped the camera and shot from that angle… literally along the line of the background card. Since she was at the rear of the softbox, when she turned to me the light from the softbox was actually going by her and she was lit by the edge, or ‘feather’ of the softbox. The light wrapped on all the white cards and added that subtle little backlight on the chin and neck. I love this light!

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Here is a lighting diagram for this shoot. You can see the two camera angles with the associated images. Try this light sometime. And especially try the feathering of the light… working on the edge of the light instead of in the light. You can discover some wonderful looks.

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I wanted to keep the background white, but not white ‘blown out’ as the hair on the wigs was very important. I chose a large soft main light and fill cards for the lighting, and added a sheet of fome core for the background. One light… several duties.

I chose a large softbox for the main light and then added a 4×8 sheet of fome core for the background. However, I turned it toward the main light so I could get maximum light on it. Then by placing the model 2 feet in front of it, the shadow was thrown off view of the camera.

A V-card was added for the fill and it came in pretty close to give me some nice skin tones as well as clean highlights on the hair. You can see in the setup shot below that the model sat toward the back of the main light as well as in front of the background. You can also see the angle of the background turned to gather as much light as possible.

This light gave me very soft, directional light, a white background and soft contrast on the shadow side of the face. All without blowing out any of the hair which was the point of the shots. Here is an additional shot of a blonde wig with the white background and clean highlights.

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The beauty dish was used as a background. I wanted a big flare thing going… it was what I was seeing in my head and I thought that the big black hat could really be cool for that.

I always see an image before I start to light it. When Briana and I were trying to figure out what we were going to do with the black hat I saw the light come through her hair. That triggered an idea for having a lot of light ‘flaring’ around her. I knew the umbrella wouldn’t work, but the beauty dish may.

We placed the beauty dish off to one side a bit to get the flare on only that side. Both lights have the same power and the beauty dish was aimed right at the camera. Flare? Oh, yeah… we got some flare going then. Here is another shot from the series:

Here is a setup shot showing the placement of the umbrella and the beauty dish:

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This side shot shows the distances of the lights. Keep in mind that it is shot with a wide angle lens so the items seem a little more distant than they actually were. When the beauty dish popped, Briana could feel the heat on her back… it is pretty close.

I shot with both my 100MM 2.8 and the 80-200mm 2.8L zoom. Interestingly I got a lot less flare from the beauty dish on the 100MM than on the 80-200. It may be due to age, the zoom is an older model, but it was definitely very noticeable on the screen.

You can see the ‘flag’ to keep a little bit of light off the background. It was getting so much spill light that it was going to bright. I wanted it just a little toward the light gray. Placing that large card did give me enough to make that side of the image a little gray, allowing the bright side to seem so much brighter.

Here is a snapshot of the Photoshop technique I used for the main shot. I will be doing some more Photoshop tutorials, with movies and work files. Watch this site and the magazine site for more information.

Part Three
Part Two
Part One

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You can create this with a scrim and lights, a double scrim (two separated by 6 – 10 inches), a softbox or combination softbox / scrim. Just depends on what you want to achieve. I use lots of canned air to clean set, bees wax to affix the jewelry, makup mirrors for adding snaps of light and an assortment of small cut white fill boards.

Here are some shots using the above lighting scheme. There is a lighting diagram at the bottom of the page.

Jewelry Brochure for a Navajo Silversmith:
There are additional small cards added, but the most obvious is the half-circle bracelet with the bevel toward the camera. A white card was positioned to pick up that bevel as it was reflecting a dark studio.

Custom Silver Smith for Western Riders Catalog:
This shot took nearly a half day to set up. The 4×5 is mounted straight down and I stood over it watching my assistant carefully place the buckles on the background – getting them straight in the camera – and then ‘tacking’ them down with a small bit of bees wax. After we were finished placing them we had to bring in fill cards to help keep the convex buckles from reflecting dark studio.

Above and below:
Two shots from an oversized direct mail piece for consumers. Each image was a single page. The designer would add the type to the image in production. Watch the multimedia presentation for a closer look at how they were done. These were both done with the setup in the diagram below. Very painstaking work, but also very much fun.


Here is a quick little multimedia presentation of the jewelry shoots here..
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The single umbrella has always done well for me in these situations. I use a big 54″ white umbrella with black backing to mitigate spill. In this one umbrella I used a 200 WS strobe so I could get a very large aperture. Limited depth-of-field is the look I was going for, so the images would have a more ‘immediate” or casual look.

The seamless was angled toward the light to make sure I got as much as I could without fall-off. The boom held a bright shiny card angled to bounce light down on the models and there was a small, white reflector angled slightly up at the model on her left. It and the umbrella were very, very close for maximum softness. Look into her eyes and you will see both.

I also placed a 4×8 sheet of white board on the ground to work on. This kept the dark carpet from adding unwanted shadows under the chin, nose and eyes. See the diagram below.

Post-processing included a bit of lightening of the white background, some careful skin retouching and Skin FX plug in for Photoshop which gave the women a glamour look without destroying the sharpness of the hair styles. Sorry, no setup shot on this one.

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Using your small camera flash for professional results is entirely possible and a fantastic option for those who travel a lot or want quick setup/teardown times. Today’s modern flash units give out a lot of power and they are easily adapted to working with a professional setups. This is a small strobe setup idea for creating a clean, white background.

I posted this on a forum to help a photographer get clean whites. I know it is a look we all love. What I notice is that so many people think that because the background is in the back, the light should be there as well. The problem is that the closer you place the light, the narrower the throw… so if you move the light farther from the back, you get a wider – more even – light.

One of the most important things for a shot like this is room. Getting the model separated from the background is so important. You need the space to get the light even on the background. Speedlights can sometimes throw a beam that is too narrow and that can create a hot spot. One thing you can do is to make sure the ‘Zoom’ on the flash is on a wide angle setting instead of a telephoto setting. That will spread the light over a wider area, but it also may lessen the overall total light that can be achieved with the strobe.

To create the clean, white background without having it flare back on the edges of the skin or blowing out the fine hair, you must keep it no more than 1 stop brighter than the main exposure.

IMPORTANT REMINDER:
The perfect exposure of white is white. I sometimes read where people refer to “blowing out” the background. To me that refers to having some flare and such and that is definitely not the look we are going for here. What we are wanting is a clean white background that is even. For me that means no more than one stop over the main, and I actually prefer a half stop. When the light is too bright the flare that starts to wrap around the edges of the skin is called ‘bleed’.

I recommend that you meter the background to get the exposure that is within your speedlights ability. So let’s say your speedlight can give a nice wide throw of even light at f8. To get it wide enough it may be very close to the model. That’s ok, as long as it is out of the shot.

Now we simply have to get the light on the subject to be one stop less. Bringing in a speedlight for f5.6 shouldn’t be a problem even in an umbrella. Setting the camera for the correct exposure of the subject, in this case, f5.6 will give you a very nice white background.

See the diagram below. It helps to have a flash meter, but I suppose you could come reasonably close with ‘chimpin’ it out. I prefer close tolerances and perfect exposures. If the back light is too hot, it bleeds back on the edges, not bright enough and it goes gray. I prefer 1/2 – 1 stop lighter than the main light. I only want bleed when it is to be used for effect.

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I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and learned how to create a clean white background that will require very little Photoshop work. Both of the shots above are as they came from camera. While there may be a little Photoshop on them, there was none to clean up the backgrounds.

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