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Hey there girls!!!

Here we are at the VERY last lesson!!!

As this was an online photography course by Jodie Coston - at the time she ran it - she had some “special requests” from students - and this is what this lesson covers!!!
Lesson Ten: Special Requests

We’ve now gone over all of the basics that I outlined when I set my course up, but I’ve been making notes as I’ve been going of areas of special interest from students. It may seem like an odd combination of subjects, but I’m sure you’ll find them of use.
Exposure Metering Systems

I’ve had a few questions from students wanting a better understanding of why their whites aren’t white enough or their blacks aren’t black enough when using auto exposure. This is because of “tricks” that your camera’s metering system (smart enough to figure out the proper exposure for you 90% of the time) plays.

To understand proper exposure, it’s important to understand what “white”, “gray” and “black” are in a photograph. (Trust me, I know how stupid that sounds, but hang in there with me.) We already discussed in our lessons on aperture and shutter speed that if you set your camera on its “auto” settings and go out and take a picture of a field of snow, you might be surprised that you don’t get a white picture back. In fact, you’ll probably be unable to find a spot of white anywhere in the picture. This is because your camera’s metering system is thinking for you.

Just as an example of what I’m talking about, take a look at the following shots. They were both taken using the same light and same aperture, and I told the camera to calculate the exposure for me by varying the shutter speed. One was taken of a black piece of posterboard and one was taken of a white piece of posterboard. I removed all of the color information from the shots, leaving them as simple grayscale, to make for easier comparison.

See if you can tell me which one is taken of white paper and which one is black paper.

No? You’re not alone. The first time I had a teacher show me this in a photography class, I didn’t believe that he had really taken a picture of a white piece of paper and a black piece of paper. So I had to go home and try it out. The results looked exactly the same, as above! I encourage everyone reading this to try this themselves. It’s really weird when you know you were just staring at white and black pieces of paper and your pictures come out looking the same. It will definitely leave an impression on you.

Generally, camera auto metering systems take a spot or two in a photo, jumble them up and expose that jumble so that it comes out as something called “middle gray” - the color you see in the examples.

There are several types of metering systems, however (and all camera manufacturers make theirs work a little differently than the other manufacturers out there), and I’ll explain them a little better so that you may know in which situations each works best.

The most common metering system that cameras use is “center weighted” metering.
In this system, your camera automatically picks out just the center of your shot and uses the information from that area to decide what “middle gray” is and how to expose your photo properly. This works well for most people who shoot snapshots and tend to plunk their subjects smack-dab in the middle of the frame, not really caring about the backgrounds or areas of brightness or darkness outside the center of the frame. This type of metering system is fine if most of your frame is close to the same color tone, with few blacks or whites.

The matrix metering system is more advanced. Your camera will divide your viewfinder into a series of “cells”, as in the illustration:

Then the camera takes the exposure of each of those cells and averages them to determine the correct exposure. Depending on the type of camera you’re using, a matrix metering system can take as many as five to twelve areas and use a very sophisticated mathematical formula to determine what exposure you should use. A metering system like this can come in particularly handy when photographing a highly contrasty situation.

The metering system I use most often if I don’t have the time or ability to make my own exposure readings is the spot metering system. The spot metering system lets you pick an area in the grid of your viewfinder to set your metering against. In the illustration, I don’t have any particularly dark areas in the shot that I need to worry about underexposing, so I would choose the brightest area of the photo for the camera to meter against. This would be the bottom area of the sky and the top of the roof, and it would assure that my sky would not be overexposed.

Spot metering is also handy if you want to take a picture of a silhouette in your foreground, like a cactus in front of a sunset. You can use spot metering to set the exposure for your sunset (normally one to two stops underexposed to really bring out the vivid colors) and your foreground object will wind up completely dark.

Along the same lines, if you are using “autofocus” mode on your camera, you can set your camera’s metering system to spot-meter on whichever area the camera focuses on. This is usually called “auto spot meter” or something similar. It’s useful for situations in which your background is significantly darker or lighter than your subject.

In this photograph, the focus was set on the wedding rings and I used the camera’s spot metering to set the exposure to keep the rings their natural rich, gold color. The lights were bright and that made the paper of the marriage certificate almost “blow out”, or turn quite bright, but that actually makes the print and the rings stand out that much more.

Auto spot metering is also very useful in situations where your subject is white and the background is black or very dark, like if you were photographing a white bird on dark water. If you exposed for the water, all details of the bird would get lost and it would come out as a bright white blob on some lovely water. But if you focus on the bird and set your metering system to expose for the bird, you’ll wind up with details of all of the bird’s feathers and darker water in the background.
Night Photography

Another area of photography I got many questions on over the course of this lesson was night photography. Hopefully I answered everybody’s specific questions via e-mail, but I thought to myself that there are so many fun things you can do with night photography that I should spend a bit of time here talking about the creativity that night can bring to you and your camera!

One quick note first - night photography is, at this point, better served by film photography than digital photography. Night photography tends to require particularly long shutter speeds, and long shutter speeds tend to equal noise in the world of digital cameras. Check to see if your digital camera comes equipped with something called “long exposure noise reduction” or something similar. If it does, your camera will work fine, but be prepared for a five to twenty second wait in between exposures while your noise reduction feature works its magic on your picture.

Okay… Another quick note first… when using long exposures and film, you may have to deal with something called “reciprocity failure”. Film is made so that when it is exposed to light, it has certain characteristics that you can rely upon. For example, its colors will be what you expect for the light you are using, you will get the exposure you expect for the aperture and shutter speed you’ve chosen, etc. However, when using long, bizarre exposures, sometimes these characteristics of the film will change. Sometimes very long exposures will create images that appear to be underexposed, even though you sat down and calculated exactly what your exposure should be. This is due to reciprocity failure - meaning that even though you are shooting with ISO 400 film, the ISO sort of “changes” on you. And on top of that, your color balance can get knocked all out of whack. For that reason, I suggest bracketing your exposures when taking long shutter-speed images, and always looking at night photography as an adventure. It’s hard to predict what you’ll come up with. Keep a log of each frame on your film and what aperture and shutter speed you used. That way, you can go back and refer to this information when you get your photos back and learn from them. You can purchase the same film again, try the same experiment and know that you’ll need to expose one or two stops more, or perhaps use a filter to compensate for the color changes. All films are different, so its something that you’ll need to play with on your own to get exactly the results you desire with your preferred film.
Fireworks

One of the most fun areas of night photography is photographing fireworks. The first tip I recommend for photographing fireworks is to find a good spot ahead of time while it’s still light out, where you won’t be surrounded by a crowd of people. Set up your tripod and leave it there until it’s time for the action to begin and you’ll have a head start on the other people trying to take photos of fireworks. Make sure you’re a good distance away from where the fireworks will be - a view from the side is much more beautiful of a view of fireworks looking straight up. Use a zoom lens that will allow you to vary how much of the sky you have in your viewfinder. If you’re around a body of water or other reflective surface, use that to your advantage and get the reflections of the fireworks in the bottom half of your frame!

When it’s time to take the pictures, have a piece of black posterboard or cardboard handy. Put your camera’s shutter speed on “B” for bulb. Since you really can’t predict exactly where the fireworks will be in your frame when they go off, you have to aim your viewfinder in the general direction of them. When you’re satisfied, trip your camera’s shutter. If you have a cable release, this will work particularly well, as it assures you won’t move the camera at all while you’re opening and closing the shutter. Watch while the fireworks go off. If there is a lag time in between each firework, you can put your piece of black cardboard in front of your camera’s shutter, leaving the shutter open - this will assure that you don’t get any unusual elements in your frame. After several fireworks have gone off, close your camera’s shutter and try again. Depending on the rate of the fireworks display, a shutter speed of between five and thirty seconds will usually be plenty. You’ll be amazed at the results you get when you pile multiple fireworks onto one camera frame!

Quick side note - make sure you have back up batteries! All those long exposures zap your camera’s energy more quickly than what you’re used to.
Painting With Light

Painting with light is a term that basically means you open your camera’s shutter in darkness and then proceed to use lights that you control to light areas from whichever directions you like to “bring out” specific sections of your photo. Commercial photographers use this a lot in the studio with something called a light pen or light wand. These tools generally let you change the color and intensity of your light and let you illuminate very specific sections of your subject. Say you had a bottle of beer that you wanted to photograph. You could place it on a piece of glass in a dark room and proceed to use your light wand to paint sections of alternating yellow and white light on the edges of the bottle, making it seem to “glow” - and then use different colors to create interesting shapes and lines on the background.

One of the most interesting uses of painting with light that I ever saw was of a castle. The photographer set up his camera on a tripod and opened the shutter for several hours at night. While the shutter was open, he walked around the grounds of the estate and used a spotlight that he covered alternately with different colored filters and shined these colors all around the foliage as well as the actual architecture. Because of the incredibly long exposure time, he and his equipment wandering around for a minute or two in different areas didn’t show up on the final transparency - but the result was the most amazing “fairy-land” effect I’ve ever seen.
Star Trails

To photograph star trails, you’ll want to again use your camera’s “bulb” setting, just like in the fireworks section. Other essential elements include:

a. A clear night with no clouds
b. No moon visible in the sky - the ambient light will mess with your exposure
c. A shooting location with no ambient light - in Montana this is easy, but if you live in a city you’ll want to venture far from your city’s limits.
d. A tripod (of course!)
e. A film camera and a fast film - ISO 400 or faster

Shutter speeds for star trail images are very long, anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours. (I once fell asleep while shooting star trails and unfortunately woke up after dawn, ruining my image.) The longer the shutter speed, the longer your star trails will be. Haze and moisture in the atmosphere can catch ambient light and affect your exposure, so it’s difficult to give you a hard and fast “use this aperture setting for this amount of time” rule. But I would start off by setting my focus on infinity, opening my aperture all the way, and taking a shot for 15 minutes. Next, try another for a half hour. Finally, make a final shot of an hour or more.

If you live where you can see the north star, put it in the center of your photograph and your stair trails will make circles around it.

If you use negative film, make SURE to take it to a professional photo finisher and tell them that you took night photos of star trails, or you won’t get back prints that look anything like what you expect. I always use the fastest slide film that I can find when photographing star trails.

It can be fun to put a land object in your foreground when making these kinds of photographs. A bridge or building can make an interesting silhouette against this type of dramatic sky. A tree “painted” by a flashlight during your exposure can be breathtaking. As always, use your imagination and have fun!
The Moon

And last: Don’t forget the moon! Adding a full moon or beautiful crescent moon to your photography can really enhance a night city or landscape shot. A telephoto lens will make your moon appear particularly large and dramatic. Keep in mind that the moon will always look much smaller in your photo than it does to your naked eye. A good thing to remember is if you take the length of the lens you’re using, divide that number by 100 and it will tell you in millimeters approximately how large the moon will appear on your film. A “standard” 50 mm lens will give you a moon that is about a half of a millimeter on your film. So you’ll want to use at least a 200 mm lens - a 500 mm lens or telescope will give you fantastic moon shots. Use your camera’s spot metering system that we talked about in the first part of this lesson to make sure that your camera captures details of the moon, not just a huge, overexposed white disc in the dark sky.
Photographer’s Block

My last area of instruction is on what to do when you’re experiencing the photographer’s version of writer’s block… You know you WANT to go out and take pictures, but you don’t know where to start. When I get in such a rut, I give myself assignments. Maybe you can use some of my past ideas to help yourself out of a similar situation.

1. A picture a day for a month.

Usually once a season, I try and spend an entire month going out and walking around in different places, looking for photographs that emphasize the beauty of that season. Some shots may be details, some may be landscapes, the sky or even weather phenomena. It spurs my creativity to know that there are photos out there just waiting to be taken, and I canÕt take them if IÕm sitting around in my office. My goal is to shoot at least twenty photos a day - hopefully fifteen or so of which are ÒkeepersÓ. When IÕm done, I go back and look through for the best shot from each day, and I have a wonderful portfolio.

2. The letters of the alphabet.

It’s sometimes fun to sit down and write out the letters of the alphabet - then come up with a subject or concept for each of them, and use those as an assignment. It’s enough to keep you busy for a month. Examples:

A - Archways (Go out looking for archways - naturally beautiful examples of architecture.)
B - Beginnings (A new baby, children on the first day of school, a new plant springing to life, sunrise, etc.)
C - Calendar Photos (Landscapes and Nature)
You get the idea.

3. Color.

Assemble a multitude of objects that are unrelated, other than by color theme. Use dramatic lighting and twenty or thirty things ranging from dead leaves to potatoes to burlap and old baseballs can create quite an interesting, fun, moody shot. If nothing else, this exercise will get you to really look at the things around you in a new way.

4. Find someone to model for you.

A new model you’ve never photographed before can be inspirational, especially if they’re willing to take direction. Capturing a person jumping in midair, peeking over a wall, in a gladiator costume from the local costume shop or anything a bit offbeat can bring your photography to life and make your creativity take off!

And that’s it, girls!!! The final installment! I hope you’ve all gotten some use from Jodie’s fantastic online course - I know I certainly have!!!

Ali

Article and Photographs by Jodie Coston. Reproduced with permission.

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Lesson Eight: Studio Lighting - Still Life and Product Photography

Now that you all have a grasp on basic lighting setups, we’ll plunge a little further into more detail, talking about still life and product photography. This is the area of photography that I personally enjoy the most. It takes up very little room and the limits of your creativity are the only limits that you have.
Equipment

You’ve already got your lighting equipment instructions as we set up in lesson seven. In this lesson we’ll go a little further into how to use that lighting effectively, especially for hard-to-light subjects, but first we’ll talk about the one element that can make or break your photo: the background. When you’re shooting still life photography, the background is as important as your subject, believe it or not.
The Black Background

The first type of background I’d recommend experimenting with is the solid black background. When you use this approach, you simplify your setup because the black material absorbs all of the light hitting it, which means that you can set up your lights specifically for your subject matter and you won’t get any distracting reflections or uneven lighting in the background that will compete for the viewer’s attention. Plus, you get that really cool sort of “floating-in-outer-space” effect as a bonus.

The photo of the apples was taken using a light above and to the right of the camera and a piece of gold foil as a reflector on the left and in front of the subject to bounce a nice warm light back and fill in any shadows. The photo of the leaf was taken using ambient light. I laid the leaf on the background and tilted the camera to give the impression that the leaf was falling through space.

So how do you achieve this effect? Many people think that they can just take any old piece of black fabric and drape it over something to provide a nice black background. Not so! You’ll be hard pressed to find regular black fabric that won’t reflect at least some light, showing wrinkles and folds in the fabric and such. Black velvet material is what you need. In the last lesson I sent you to the hardware store for equipment. Now it’s time to go to the fabric store. You’ll find black velvet in varying thicknesses and densities. The thicker, the better, as thicker material will act as a sponge and really absorb much more light. I have a large piece that’s about two and a half yards long that I use for my tabletop photography when I need a solid black background. Velvet tends to be fairly expensive by the yard, but fabric stores tend to have big sales every so often, and if you can get it for a decent price, you’ll find it’s a worthwhile investment. I’ve had mine for years and as long as you take care of it by keeping it clean and not leaving heavy things setting on it for too long to crush indentations into it, you should never need to replace it.

In this case, setting up your background is very easy. You simply need a clean table for your subject and a sturdy board of some sort to set up at a 90 degree angle to act as a backboard. You can then clamp your black velvet so it hangs down nicely and lay it out over your table, then proceed to light and photograph your subject.

I have a frame built from 2-inch by 2-inch boards similar to this diagram. It works well for all kinds of lighting setups. In the case of the black velvet, I can simply clip it on at the top and then down each side to hold it in place. Many times I want to place my subjects on a translucent material so I can light them from behind or below (we’ll get to that part a little later), so this is ideal. I can take out the bottom horizontal piece in that case so it doesn’t show up in the photo, and then put it back in for sturdiness when I’m done. It props up on its side in the corner so it doesn’t take up any space and is just about the handiest piece of photo equipment that I have!

The White Background

Another popular - and more advanced - background used in tabletop photography is the white background. There are a couple of ways to go about achieving a nice white background.

Normally when you want a white background, the idea is that you want to really show off your subject and you don’t want anything at all to distract the viewer’s eye. The best way to do this is by using what’s referred to as a “seamless background”. For photographing small objects in still life photography, and easy and inexpensive way to do this is by using plain old posterboard. It tends to work better than fabric because there are no textures to worry about dealing with, and one side is shiny while the other is matte, meaning you can control how much light you want bouncing around off of your background.

Simply prop your posterboard up as in this diagram. Then set up your lighting for your subject and photograph Ôtil your heart’s content. When I use this kind of a setup, I usually put my key light to one side, slightly above the subject, a fill light to the other side a bit lower and use a reflector to bounce light back and fill in any shadows. To get a REALLY white background, you’ll need to be very careful about your exposure and your white balance. You can bracket your shots a bit, but you’ll want to make sure and set your camera to meter off of your subject, NOT your background. If the camera takes in its light reading from the background, it will try and set that white to be an ever-so-undesirable shade of gray and your subject will wind up underexposed. (Sort of like when we talked about photographing snow a few lessons back.)

The posterboard background was used to make this image.

One thing you’ll notice, however, is the heavy shadow directly underneath the ducks. This shot was lit with those shadows in mind to give the viewer the feeling that the ducks are really “sitting” in this huge field of white and to add perspective to the image. The depth of field adds to the perspective even further. I used the matte side of the white posterboard in the case, and I could have made another interesting effect by using the shiny side and letting a bit of reflection of the ducks show up. The following picture of the apples uses this reflection technique to add depth. There is still a shadow to give you the feeling that the basket is sitting on something, but there’s also an ever-so-slight reflection of the red and white stripes of the basket that adds even more depth. The viewer might not even notice it, but it’s those subtle details that you’ll pay more and more attention to as you advance with your photography.

Sometimes, however, you want a REALLY white background with no shadows at all, to make your subject look like it is floating in space, similar to the black background we talked about. These kinds of images are very popular in commercial photography because a graphic designer can simply select the subject from the background and paste it into his design. How do you do this?

One way to do so is using this exact same setup and lighting very, very carefully. By playing with your key and fill lights, it’s entirely possible to completely eliminate shadows. Using several big softboxes (like we made in lesson seven) will be especially helpful, since softboxes tend to produce fewer shadows to begin with.

There’s also another way, and that is to place your subject on a white translucent background that is lit from behind. Then set up your lights for your subject, expose for your subject, and you’ve got yourself a subject floating in midair! These translucent kits are available for commercial photographers for fairly reasonable prices. Your local glass store may be able to hook you up with piece of white translucent plexiglass curved at about a 90 degree angle for even a more reasonable rate. There are also commercial “light tents” made of white fabric that you simply place your subject in, light the whole thing up, and - whammo! - you’ve got yourself a seamless white background.

As with all of these lessons, however, I’m trying to show everyone ways to experiment and decide what type of photography is right for you before you go spending a lot of money on equipment. If tabletop and product photography are something you know you’re interested in, you might want to look into these commercial options, but I highly recommend trying the do-it-yourself way first, even if its only as a learning experience. The more you know about lighting, the more successful your photographs will be.
Still Life With Other Backgrounds

Of course, there are a million other kinds of backgrounds you can use in still life photography, as well. Using fabrics that complement the colors of your subject and draping them so that the light falls gracefully and creates interesting contours can really add to a photograph.

Also, adding other objects to your background that relate to your subject and enhance the color scheme of your setting can really enhance an image nicely. This old leaf had fallen off a plant, but when I picked it up to throw it away, the textures caught my eye. I placed in on some fabric I had recently purchased to make curtains and used one large soft light to the left of the camera to really emphasize both the textures in the leaf and the fabric for a beautiful, dramatic still life.

In this shot, I used a warming filter on my camera to enhance the gold tones and create a warm feeling. The wooden box was placed on a reflective gold fabric and the shiny gold ornaments in the background add a visual sparkle.

For this photo, I wanted a feeling of simplicity and purity. I placed the white rose on a white background and set up one softbox to the side of the rose to bring out the texture with soft shadows, but I wasn’t satisfied with the results. I had purchased several roses, so I decided to pluck the petals from one of them and use them as the background. This has been a very successful stock photograph in terms of sales because the background is just a bit different than a lot of shots you see.

This shot was a lot easier to do than it might look. I simply used a white piece of posterboard for a seamless background and one strong light source. I then covered half of that light source with a dark, graduated piece of plastic (I think it was a tinted plastic clipboard from an office supply store, if I remember correctly) and the colors that were scattered onto the background simply curved right along with the posterboard, making this dramatic effect. I’m showing you this to emphasize that you should never quit being creative. I did this as a bit of a lark just to see what happened and wound up with a fantastic result!

In the last lesson, one of the photographic lighting terms mentioned was “gobo”. I don’t know why they have such a silly name, but they’re wonderful for enhancing your photography. A gobo is simply a piece of metal with holes cut in it that you place in front of a light source to throw “shapes” of light onto your background. You can purchase them commercially or you can make your own, cutting thin lines and patterns into anything you have handy. As when we were talking about scrims in the last lesson, I want to emphasize that anything you place in front of a light source needs to be fire-resistant and never left unattended.

This photo of the tulips was taken using a dominant light source from the left, fill light from the right and a light aimed directly at the background (but not falling on the subject) covered by a gobo with a couple of diagonal-shaped holes in it. The gobo sheds that angle of light on the background that the viewer might not even consciously notice, but it’s the detail that really makes this composition complete. If the four tulips were on a plain white background without that bit of light, it would be a much more “flat” composition and far less appealing to the eye.

This photo of the hourglass is dramatic because the subject itself if lit with a strong orange light from behind and off to the right of the camera, emphasizing the outline of the glass and the warm gold tones of the hourglass frame. A faint fill light from the front left kept the hourglass from being a complete silhouette, adding dimension to the shot.

The client needed some text space in the image, so I kept the subject out of the left half of the frame and sprinkled some interesting light on the background, which was made of crumpled paper grocery bags, painted with metallic copper and gold paints. The gobo sent a few straight, thin lines of light onto the background, but because the background had been crumpled and uncrumpled, it turned the straight lines into interesting zigzags and swirls.

Any time you photograph a reflective surface such as the metal in this hourglass, if you use very dramatic lighting, you’ll need to be conscious of overexposure where there are specular reflections. Specular reflections are actually mirror images of the light source, itself. In this case of the hourglass, since the frame is made of long brass cylinders, the specular reflections turn into long, stretched out bright spots. The other thing that adding the fill light to the front of the hourglass did was let me expose the shot for a shorter period of time, so these reflections didn’t just become huge, white, blown-out spots.

Most of the time when you see backgrounds lit with a gobo covering a light source, they’ll be in the shape of straight lines, waffle patterns or other geometric designs. As you can see from the examples, you can create a lot of variety by using textured backgrounds to alter those patterns.
Glass & Liquids

The hardest subjects to photograph well are glass and liquids. For one thing, glass gets dirty really easily so you have to clean it until it is spotless and then be careful to not leave any fingerprints on it. For another thing, there are so many reflections you need to deal with. The specular reflections we talked about with the hourglass work the same with a glass subject. When doing tabletop photography, though, there are some easy ways to keep your reflections to a minimum and actually use them to enhance your photograph.

The best ways to light glass and liquids are from above, behind and the sides. If you keep your light sources anywhere but the front of the subject and keep the rest of the room dark, you’ll wind up with successful shots. A lot of photographers also use the “light tents” that I mentioned earlier, also, but there are several ways you can experiment without incurring the expense of extra equipment. Let’s talk about some of those.

To take this picture, I got a good bottle of wine and headed to my studio. I used the same sort of seamless background setup that we showed above, but I used black posterboard (double thick so no light shined through). Then I placed a softbox very close and behind the wine glass on the camera’s left. The vertical reflection on the right side of the glass is actually a reflection of the softbox - keep in mind that when light shines through liquid in a round glass container, whatever is behind the container will appear to show up backwards. It’s important that it was the only light source in the room - that eliminated any chance of other reflections showing up. I then used a seamless black background for the subject. What a fun shot to take! When you’re done you can drink the wine! (Hic!)

This shot was taken with a softbox behind the subject and a small light just above it. Illuminating fluids in this manner will really seem to make them glow and can create quite a dramatic impact. For variation, you can try dropping in an cherry or an olive and capturing the splash! Using a softbox as a background creates a very bright light, perfect for the quick shutter speed needed for such a shot. I’d suggest doing the martini shots and wine shots on different days if you plan on consuming the products when you’re finished! (Hic!)

The last thing I want to mention, and this works for other subjects, too - not just glass and liquids - is using a piece of glass as a base to set your subject on. If you backlight your subject and it is your only light source, a piece of glass can make a very visually interesting addition to your photograph by making a mirror image of your subject.

For this product setup, I again used a softbox as a background and simply placed the perfume bottle on a piece of glass (steal one out of a picture frame if you don’t have glass sheets handy). You will see this technique time and time again in product photography - it really gives a nice, professional finish to your photo.

Homework:

* Photograph your subject on either a white or black background. Make sure your subject is properly lit and composed and take care to get those backgrounds really white or black.

* Photograph a still life scene and use light to convey a definite mood, picking up textures and using shadows creatively as part of your composition.

* Photograph a liquid in glass, taking care to avoid distracting reflections.

Article and Photographs by Jodie Coston. Reproduced with permission.

Looking forward to seeing your creations with this one, girls!!! Remember to upload your examples into the gallery

Ali

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Welcome to Lesson 7!!!

Other than taking pictures of beautiful landscapes and flowers, one of the main reasons people get into taking pictures is to create beautiful portraits. Whether your models are your friends, family or paying customers, portrait photography can be very rewarding. In this lesson we’ll discuss how to create flattering portraits of people even if you don’t have your own photography studio, how you can set up your own portable at-home studio on a shoestring budget and we’ll also talk about different kinds of lighting equipment for those people who are ready to take the plunge into advanced lighting.
For The Beginner - Light

Photography is all about light. Literally translated, it means “painting with light”. Having the right light can make or break your photos. When people are starting out with photography, I always suggest that they start out by learning to control the available light (also called ambient light) that they have in the atmosphere to work with. Using flashes and studio lighting can really only be done effectively when you’ve got a good handle on what shadows do and how they affect your final photo. I almost always, to this day, still prefer available light for my portraiture. However, when you’re working inside, and because people as subjects tend to move, studio lighting is sometimes necessary in order to get the fast shutter speeds needed for successful portraits. But before we get into that, let’s talk about natural light.

Natural (Ambient) Lighting

The portrait above was taken outdoors, using the available light in the atmosphere. We were in the shade, so there are no harsh shadows on the model’s face, and the overall even lighting makes for a nice fashion portrait.

It was a sunny day when we did this shoot, so having the model in the shade was a big help. If there hadn’t been any shade to work with, I would have used the photographer’s greatest friend, the reflector card. A reflector card is used to bounce light that’s shining down back up onto a subject to add light to the shadowed areas, making for a much more even overall appearance. A reflector card can be made of any number of things. You can buy them in photo equipment stores, but I generally use either white poster board, a white umbrella or aluminum foil (first crinkle it all up, then uncrinkle it, then tape several pieces together until you’ve got a large piece of several thicknesses that you can work with easily) to reflect light back onto my subjects and fill in dark spots. One 16×20-inch sheet of white cardboard (or whatever material you choose) is perfect. For maximum versatility, use a sheet of cardboard and then tape or glue the crinkled and uncrinkled piece of aluminum foil to the other side.

As a side note, aluminum foil can be especially fun if you can find it in gold color. It will cast a very nice, warm light onto your subject. Think of it this way - a reflector is a cheap, easy to obtain piece of equipment that makes your light work twice as hard and can really make your portraits look professional.

If it’s not a sunny day and you have a high, overcast, cloudy sky, congratulations! You’ve been blessed with the world’s biggest softbox. A softbox is a piece of studio lighting equipment that nobody should be without. As its name suggests, it spreads a diffuse light out over your subject so as to avoid harsh shadows. Overcast skies do the same thing. If you get skies like this, grab your subject and head outdoors to snap as many portraits as you can. I actually have my deck set up outdoors so that I can hang backgrounds and move my tripod all around so that I can take advantage of this kind of light. It makes for the absolute best working conditions!

As you can maybe tell from my previous diatribe, for standard portraiture, you don’t want shadows across your subject’s face. The more even the lighting, the better.
Rembrandt Lighting

Of course, as with all rules, there are exceptions. Rembrandt lighting will spread shadows onto your subject, but given the dramatic, beautiful effects you can create like this, you’ll see why it’s a popular method of portraiture.
What is Rembrandt lighting?

I’m sure you’re all familiar with Rembrandt, the great painter and artist, often referred to as one of the “Masters” of his time. Rembrandt used a technique of setting his subjects near a large north-facing window (so no direct sunlight would hit the subject) and turning them in relation to the window to create flattering lighting effects that really emphasized the high spots and depths of his subject’s face. To achieve such lighting, light is generally higher than the subject, placed to the side of the subject, and keeps half of the subject’s face lit (the side that’s turned away from the camera), while allowing only part of the other side to be lit. If you have a large window that faces away from the sun you can easily achieve very professional-looking Rembrandt lighting.

Let’s not forget, portraits can be of animals, too!
Flash

Flash - on camera flash, that is - is one thing I NEVER use. There is just about no light less flattering than a bright light aimed straight at your subject that causes harsh shadows. There are studio strobe units that you set off to the side of your camera and flash as you press the shutter and those are a completely different thing. Unless you are going to be in a dark situation where you absolutely have no choice but to use your camera’s flash, I don’t recommend using it. If you need to and your camera has a hot shoe where you can use interchangeable flash units, I suggest buying one that stands as high up and far away from your camera’s lens as possible. This will at least produce a more flattering light and eliminate the “red eye” effect we’ve all seen too many times. Several manufacturers make white plastic diffusers that go on the front of the flash - this can be a real help and I highly recommend them.

A studio flash (also called a strobe) is an extremely bright light that comes on momentarily when you hit your shutter. Due to the light intensity, these lights can be extremely hot and uncomfortable for a subject, which is why they are used as a brief strobe instead of left on all the time. We’ll talk about placements of studio lights in a little bit, and if you choose to use strobes, you can place them exactly the same way as what we’ll talk about.
Environmental Portraits

There is also the environmental portrait. This can be really great for capturing the personality of a person that you’re shooting. If you pick up a magazine like “People”, you’ll see a lot of examples of environmental portraits. Same with a lot of corporate brochures that like to show a picture of their president, maybe at his desk, surrounded by whatever product they make or sell, or wearing a hard hat and out with the blue collar workers if they’re an industrial company. The trick is to make the subject of the portrait comfortably blend into their environment, not just stand there as if they’re posing haphazardly wherever you caught them. A librarian amongst stacks and stacks of books might be a creative environmental portrait. In these cases, you’re going to be using available light - the subjects won’t be coming to an environment where you control what lights are where - so be prepared for a little longer shutter speed or a diffused flash, and come equipped with your light reflectors to really make good use of what light there is.
Setting Up Your Own Studio At Home

So how do we do this at home without spending enough money to open up our own full-time photography studio? Besides your key and fill lights, other light sources can be added - background lights, accent lights, all kinds of things - but for now we’ll stick with the basics and an economical way to achieve them.

Step one in setting up your home studio begins by finding a suitable area to take photographs. If you have a room you don’t use or you can con your spouse out of letting you use the garage, you’re all set. You need a good chunk of empty space for adequate room. Ideally, you want about five feet of space between your subject and the background, so you can use depth of field to make the background blur a bit while keeping the subject sharply in focus. Then you want at least seven feet between the subject and your camera lens so that you can make good use out of the portrait lens that we talked about in lesson three. Add in room for you and the tripod, some lights, and you’re talking about a good amount of space. You’ll want at least ten feet of width to the area you choose. Once you’ve found a spot, you can continue to the next step.

Step two begins in my husband’s favorite place, the hardware store. Buy some of those clip-on work lights. They’re really cheap, like five, ten bucks or so. (That’s US dollars I’m referring to.) About 250W lights will be perfect. How many you buy will be dependent on which lighting setup you want to try. I recommend three for good versatility, four if you want to add something called a “hair light” that we’ll discuss later and five if you also want to add a “background light” that we’ll also discuss later. Hair lights and background lights won’t be necessary to really flatter your subject’s features, but they can push your photography “over the top” into a really professional level.

Okay, now buy a piece of white foamcore board for each clip-on light. It’s sort of like poster board, but the middle is stuffed full of a Styrofoam-like substance. You can also get it at art supply or office supply stores.

You want a large piece, 8 feet by 4 feet. (You metric system people are going to have to adapt for this one.) If you can’t find one that large, two pieces that you can cut into 4 foot by 4 foot will work fine. You can also make these half-size by using 4 feet by 2 feet sheets of foamcore. Very handy for smaller tabletop photography projects. I use these extensively for a lot of my projects. If you choose to make the smaller ones, just cut all of the following measurements in half. Smaller ones are also great if you don’t have a huge amount of room to work with.

Make lines down it, dividing it up into four 2-foot sections. Then on these lines, make marks where all the little circles are indicated in the diagram. They’re 18 inches in from the outside of the foamcore. Now play connect-the-dots by drawing in all of the other lines that are noted on the diagram. Then use a razor blade or X-acto knife to cut the foamcore along these lines.

Now, put it together. You’ll need duct tape, packing tape or some other kind of wide, heavy-duty tape. If you match up the squares, triangles, x’s and z’s in the diagram, you’ll get a little pyramid thing.

Take the one I called a “light piece” and a hole in the middle of it large enough that your light’s clip/handle will fit through, as well as the cord and the neck of the lamp. You don’t want the hot sides of the lamp to touch your foamcore, so the hole should be thin. Measure both the clip and the plastic neck of the lamp and make this hole just big enough that it fits through without the metal part of the lamp touching it. It will depend on the measurements of your lamp, but mine is about two inches by five inches. This piece will get taped inside of the small hole, as you can see in the pictures.

Now, you can choose what you’d like to cover the large opening that will diffuse the light. This is referred to in the lighting side of photography as a “scrim”. A piece of white bedsheet will work fine - kids bedding is best as you can get it in heat-resistant fabric. You can also go to the fabric store and get all different kinds of fabrics. The thicker it is, the more diffuse your light will be. If you plan on always using the same cover, you can just cut the fabric to fit and tape it over the large hole. If you think you might want to change it, you can either sew elastic around the edges so it fits over the hole like a shower cap or use clips to hold it on. I go for the shower cap idea, personally. Besides diffusing your light this way, you can also get sheer colored fabrics that will actually color your light for interesting effects you can experiment with later. I know I mentioned the idea of heat-resistant fabric, and make SURE that is what you use, and don’t leave your lights on unattended.

Now that we’ve gone through this process (easier than the directions make it sound, though, right?), let’s have a look at what a difference the diffuser makes.

Notice how much of a harsh shadow there is without the diffuser. You’ll find for portrait photography, this will really make all of the difference. Skin will look softer and you’ll still get enough shadow that the lighting won’t appear flat.

Now is the best time for me to mention that if you have no interest in going to all of this trouble, nor do you want to spend the money on commercial soft boxes, you’ve got a second-best alternative.

You’re still going to have to buy a white lighting umbrella for each light, but they’re reasonably priced. These may not cut harsh shadows as well as a softbox, but they’ll do an admirable job, regardless.

Okay! Now you just need to find stands for your lights to and you’re ready to go. One for each light, depending on how many lights you’ve decided you want. You can either buy them from a photographic supply store, OR since we’re being super-creative and frugal here, you can opt for other choices.

Since the lights we bought have those fantastic, sturdy clips, they’ll clip to darn near anything and stay put fairly well. If you have ladders, stools or chairs, they’ll all make good (if rather makeshift) stands onto which you can clip your lights. I want to emphasize that you want to make sure whatever you use is very sturdy for safety reasons.

You can also buy lengths of PVC pipe at the hardware store and all kinds of joints to fashion it into whatever shape you choose. This can make a nice, sturdy light stand as well. If you look at professional light stands, you can create the same design with PVC pretty easily. My husband made one for me that is sort of an upside-down horseshoe, so I can clip my lights above my subject and/or on either side. I also have separate individual light stands so I can vary the distance between my key lights and fill lights. If you want to spend the money, the professional light stands are ideal - they telescope into different lengths and have sturdy tripod bases. They also fold up conveniently so you can put them away in the corner when you’re done with them. So keep any and all of those options in mind when you’re wondering how to set up your lights. Just because you don’t want to spend an arm and a leg on equipment doesn’t mean that you can’t make your own equipment that will function just as well as the professional stuff!
How do you set your lights up in the most flattering way for your subject?

This is as easy as it gets!

This will do okay when you’re starting out, especially if you use something to bounce the light back onto the subject to help with any shadows. Give it a whirl if you’re just starting out with portrait photography. It will help you when you try more complicated lighting setups. When I say “more complicated”, I truly don’t want to scare anyone off from trying other things. Maybe “complicated” or “advanced” aren’t the right words, because lighting is pretty easy - it’s all about trying new things, experimenting and just moving light stands around. The picture of the girl used the key light a bit off to the side and a diffuser card on the other side. Dramatic shadows but still a nice effect.

Okay, a little more “complicated” setup follows, but first, let’s talk about different ways you can place your lights and why.

A portrait lighting system usually includes at least two light sources, the main light (called the key light) and the fill light - which is usually a less intense light, a light of the same intensity placed further away (equating to a less intense light) or a reflector. There are two main portrait lighting styles - broad lighting and short lighting. These terms are used to imply where the lights are placed in reference to your subject.

Broad Lighting:
To create a broad light, you’ll need to pose your subject so that 2/3 to 3/4 of their face is facing you and your camera and then direct the key light toward the side of the face that is closest to the camera. This is a flattering technique if your subject has a long or thin face, as it will add weight and width to the overall face.

Short Lighting:
For short lighting, you would pose your subject the same way as above, but direct your key light toward the side of the face that is furthest away from the camera. This type of light will slim a heavier face.

This is the next most “advanced” lighting setup. You second light (the fill light) should be further away from the subject than the key light, or a light bulb of lesser intensity. It will be quite flattering to your subject’s features. Notice the lack of shadows compared to the photo made with the first lighting setup.

Adding a background light to the second lighting setup, you’ll really notice a beautiful effect. It will make your subject stand out from the background and really give the appearance of a professional portrait.

Finally, the last light you might add is called a “hair light”. This works as a backlight and sits behind the subject, focusing on their hair. It will give the edges of their head a nice, attractive glow.

Glossary of Lighting Terms

Following are some general lighting terms. We’ve gone over a few in this lesson, but you may get creative ideas from others, and we’ll use yet others in our next lesson on studio lighting for commercial and product shots.
Bounce

= A reflector, usually white, silver or gold, used to bounce light back from the main light onto the subject.

Diffuser

= Thin, translucent material used to diffuse light. Can be tracing paper, umbrellas, translucent plastic or even a bedsheet, as discussed in this lesson.

Effects Light

= A light that is neither the key light or fill light. These are usually used as back lights to bright out a vivid “halo” around a subject’s hair, or sometimes a “background light” used to create interesting patterns on the background.

Fill

Lights which fill in the shadows on the subject, usually not as high in intensity as the key light or further away from the subject than the key light.

Flag

= The opposite of a reflector, these are sometimes used in studio lighting. They are dark and absorb extra light in order to maximize shadows. Not generally used in portraiture but very common in studio product shots where dramatic lighting is needed. Oftentimes a white reflector card will be painted black on the other side so it can fill this purpose.

Gel

= Translucent or transparent colored material used to modify the color of light.

Gobo

= A sheet with cut-outs on it that creates interesting shadows when placed in front of your light source. Again, not generally used in portraiture (unless used as a background light), these are common in product and stock photography. Imagine a metal sheet with squares cut into it resembling those of a Belgian waffle. If you angle your light at 45 degrees to a background and put this piece of metal in front of it, you’ll get dramatic trapezoidal or rhomboidal effects. You can make your own and they can be quite fun to play with!

Key Light

= The main light source, casting the dominant light and shadows in an image.

Reflector

= A “bounce” as mentioned above or a dish-shaped item that surrounds the back of a light source, ensuring no light “escapes” and it is all directed at the subject.

Scrim

= Heat-resistant fabric diffuser for softening lighting.

Snoot

A cone-shaped item you can place over the front of your light. It intensifies the light and gives you the ability to direct your light source in very specific places. Again, not used in portraiture very much, but you can produce amazing results with these in still life photography.

Soft Box