Painless Lighting in the Real World
by David Honl
The #1 phobia of my workshop students? The fear of lighting. Feeling more like a dentist with a good bedside manner, I assure them there is nothing to be frightened of, and lighting can actually be quite painless. When executed properly it can also be one of the most gratifying aspects of your photography.
Although introducing artificial lighting into your pictures can be quite daunting on the surface, digital photography now makes it even easier to practice and perfect. Gone are the old Polaroid and clip tests we used in the past as you can now preview your lighting instantly on the back of your camera, and make adjustments on the fly. Many times I even have my Powerbook tethered to my camera for a color corrected, larger screen preview of my shots. With lighting, practice makes perfect, so I encourage everyone to frequently play with different exposures, lighting setups, and subjects. You'll soon be in the real world of lighting and ready to take on most any task.
Over the years my use of lighting has been actually quite simple, both in design and execution- I almost always use a soft box of some size or type and reflectors usually pay a supporting role somewhere in the equation.
I have several soft boxes and reflectors, I use some more than others, and they all serve different purposes. I just realized I'm using one of (Photoflex founder) Gene Kester's original softboxes from 1988, and it still shoots strong (this means 2 things: the Photoflex boxes last long and I'm getting much older).
BC Rich Guitar
Shot on the patio of my friend Steve Stevens' Hollywood home, there was plenty of indirect sunlight to illuminate the subject but the light was a bit flat. I added a large Photoflex LiteDome to the right of the camera to bring up the contrast while softening the shadows a bit with a reflector to the right of the subject.
Steve, a Grammy winning guitarist and Billy Idol's longtime guitarist and co-writer, has a massive collection of rare guitars and we photographed about 50 of them on this day.
Saddam Hussein's Tailor
Tailor Recep Cesur began supplying custom made suits to Saddam Hussein from his Baghdad shop in 1996,
and has sewn 14 of them for the former Iraqi President since his Baghdad trial. I photographed him in
one of his shops using a single
Photoflex LiteDome Q39XS and a
Canon 550EX (on
full ETL) placed just to the left and above my camera.
Catalog Cover
For this catalog cover, I lit 11 models and a chimpanzee with 2 Large Photoflex LiteDomes and Speedotron heads placed evenly on each side of my camera. I underexposed the background by about 1 1/2 stops to draw a subtle attention to the subjects, while using a normal flash meter reading off the subjects.
Tippi Hedren with Bengal Tiger
A great example of a shoot where simple, efficient lighting was an absolute must. Working with a big cat requires a great deal of respect and preparation. With a big cat trainer on each side of the set coaxing and feeding the tiger, I didn't want extra stands or reflectors to get in the way, so I opted for a single Large Photoflex LiteDome with Speedotron head just to the right of my camera.
As with most of my environmental portraits, I underexposed the background about 1-1/2 stops while using a normal flash meter exposure from Tippi's face.
Photoflex Ad (self portrait)
The task was a self portrait showing my favorite Photoflex products in action. Shot on a hazy early morning along the Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul, I used a mainlight of a Photoflex LiteDome Q39XS/Canon 550EX to the right of the camera and a Photoflex Translucent LiteDisc (supported on a lightstand with a LiteDisc Holder). To illuminate the LiteDisc, I clamped a Canon 430EX about 4 feet behind the disc. Underexposing the background by 1 stop, I used a manual exposure on the camera, and full ETTL on the speedlights. I used Canon's wireless speedlight transmitter and warming gels on both strobes. How did I fire the camera? There's a remote switch under my left hand :-)
David Honl is an Istanbul based photojournalist, covering the Middle East. Over the past 20 years his work has appeared in publications including Newsweek, The New York Times, People, Paris Match, and French Elle.