This was shot on a rainy day and to make the window light work, I added lighting.
Many times I am caught in a room on a cloudy or overcast day. The light from the window is just not enough.
To make the above photograph I put an Alienbees B1600 monobloc light with a white shoot through large umbrella just outside the professor’s window. To trigger the light I used the PocketWizard Plus II reciever and the PocketWizard Plus II Transmitter.
Inside the light needed just a little help to keep the shadows from going too dark. To soften the shadows I put another Alienbees B1600 with just a bare-bulb on a light stand and put it as close to the ceiling as I could.
The outside light was on full power and the bare-bulb light inside was at 1/8 – 1/16th power.
Below is the lighting diagram for the setup.
Next time you need sunlight through a window and you don’t have a sunny day to help, use off camera flash to create it for you.
How do you get the photo on top versus the one below? Read on. Lighting everything and using a white background are what you typically get at the bottom. TIP: to get a clean white background, be sure the background is 1 stop greater than the subject. Also, slightly angle the background so it isn’t perpendicular to the camera, or you will get a light flare caused by the background. (Figure 1)
I like to light parts of a scene rather than all of it. Lighting everything, as in the photo above, gives a sterile or even a feeling of the afterlife and living in heaven. If I want that look, I might use this lighting setup. The other advantage of lighting the subject is that you can move and spin, and the light will look the same. You don’t worry about shadows in the wrong places.
Figure 1 was done using this setup. Three lights are in the background and two on umbrellas lighting the statue. (Figure 2)Using the two umbrellas like in Figure 1, I now just used one light on the background, but now with a blue gel. Because it takes very little light to affect the white background, the two lights on the subject are spilling over to the background and washing out the blue color. (Figure 3)This is the lighting setup for figure 3. (Figure 4)By changing the background from a white background to a black background and everything else the same as in Figure 3, the blue pops. The reason is the black sucks light as opposed to reflecting light like the white background. (Figure 5)
I like to have more drama as in this photo of the golfer with the blue background fading out to black around the edges.
As you can see, everything is the same. There are two changes: 1) White to Black Background and 2) 4 times the light through the blue gel. Just remember to get the gel to look the same color as you see it, it must be 2-stops brighter on the background than the light on the subject, assuming you expose for the subject. (Figure 6)Just changing the gel and leaving everything else the same, I can now decide which color I like best. (Figure 7)Here is what the setup looks like in figure 7. (figure 8)Changing back to the white background, I again get contamination from the front lights, which goes pink instead of red. (Figure 9)
This photo is too pink and there is pink light on the subject. This happens when you are not controlling your lights. Learn to control the lights by not lighting everything up like you do with umbrellas.
Figure 9 setup. (Figure 10)This is shot on the white background. I changed the setting on the background to -2 stops under the setting of the subject. I removed the umbrellas and put 10 degree grids on the lights. (Figure 11)Here is the setup for figure 11. Everything goes black except for where the light is hitting. This is how you can control the light and not light the whole room. (Figure 12)
You don’t need to use gels to get a dramatic effect, but the more you learn not to light everything, but just parts of the photo, is when you can direct the audience’s attention in the photo. There is more than just lighting parts of the image; you can ratio the light throughout the photo and have some parts that are not black but slightly darker than the subject. This way you still see those other aspects of the scene, but they are secondary to the main subject. It is like having two or three sentences in a paragraph, and you direct the reader to who the main subject is and the supporting roles.
Here is the light powered down for the white background for figure 11. (Figure 13)Just change the red gel to blue, leaving everything as shown in figure 11. (Figure 14)All I changed is the gel to blue from red to get figure 14. (Figure 15)Here you can see I have the power way up, actually 2 stops greater than the subject. This is for figure 5 photo. (Figure 16)A tip to make your gels last longer. Cut them to the size you use for your strobes, take gaffers tape, and wrap the edges. When you use them on the lights, turn the modeling light off after checking them with the modeling light. They will last longer and not melt or catch fire. (Figure 17)Some of my gels I have labeled. Here I have the gel on the left labeled 3200 Kelvin and 81B. This lets me know I can put this over a strobe to match incandescent light bulbs. The one on the right is 30G, letting me know that I can balance my strobes to color match the fluorescent for many fluorescent lights. (Figure 18)
