making light 2 (1)

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PIET VAN DEN EYNDE

Advanced Use o O-Camera Flash

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Contentsi: Introducton

2.2: More Modiers

3: Ten Case Studies

.: Going Beyond Sync Speed

2.3: Thinking Outside the Sotbox

4: Four Interviews

.2: Working With Multiple Flashes

2.4: More Useul Stu

5: Conclusion

2.1: Advanced Triggering Systems

2.5: Outgrowing Your Small Flashes

PIET VAN DEN EYNDE

Advanced Use o O-Camera Flash

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In Making Light, the rst part o

this two-part eBook, we

introduced o-camera fash,

using typical hotshoe fashes,

as a way o improving not only

the quantity o light but, more

importantly, the quality.

O-camera fash may look complicated and

intimidating at rst, but it needn’t be: you just

need some basic technique, some gear, and

some vision, just like in any other discipline o

photography (and any art, or that matter).

In the technique department, we discussed

the main characteristics o light, and the

important physics ormulas that all light,

including fash light, is governed by.

In the gear chapters o the rst eBook, we intro-

duced a couple o ways to trigger an o-camera

fash and introduced you to a couple o modiers.

Finally, in the last part, we discussed nine

setups that were all taken with a basic o-

camera fash set, consisting o one remote

fash, an umbrella, and a small sotbox.

In this second eBook, we’ll dive a little deeper

into the matter: we’ll cover some more advanced

techniques and introduce you to some extra

modiers. We’ll add more fashes to our setup,

either bundling them or power or setting them

up in dierent places or added eect. We’ll still

be working mainly with Speedlights, Speedlites,

or other brand hotshoe fashes (just more o

them), but we’ll also touch upon some alterna-

tive portable fash systems. The ocus will be on

location lighting and portraiture, because ater

all, that’s where these little wonders… shine.

Ten new case studies will show you how

these new concepts can be added to the ones

we discussed in the rst eBook to take real-

lie shoots to the proverbial next level.

But it’s the nal part that may very well be the

most interesting. In the last chapter, we’ll let

you look into the minds, portolios, and camera

bags o our Belgian photographers, some o

which are known worldwide or their work witho-camera fash. I hope you’ll nd these our

interviews as rereshing and stimulating as I did.

1 Introducton

^

A shutter speed o 1/50

to reeze this dancer in

let side is exposed by t

his right side, just out o

Westcott 28-inch sotboSB-900s at ull power. S

© Serge Van Cauwenbe

sergevancauwenbergh.c

the poetry o the setup

more than the actual re

http://craftandvision.com/books/making-light/

http://craftandvision.com/books/making-light/

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


... Hgh-Speed SyncEvery camera has a sync speed (sometimes reerred to as X-sync or synchro-X): it’s

the astest shutter speed that will allow you to eectively trigger a fash without run-

ning the risk that part o your picture is not exposed by that fash. For most mod-

ern DSLRs, this sync speed varies between 1/200 and 1/250 o a second.

Using aster shutter speeds in combination

with fash will give you a black eathered

stroke across one edge o your exposure, be-

cause the fash is hitting the already closing

shutter instead o the sensor. For this reason,

the non-manual modes o your camera will

normally prevent you rom accidentally going

beyond your sync speed when using fash.

Yet, there are times when you’d want to

have a aster speed. For one, higher sync

speeds mean your fash eectively becomes

more powerul in relation to the ambient

sunlight. Because, as we know rom volume

1, the shutter speed controls the ambient,

the aperture controls the fash, right?

Let’s assume that you have a scene at 1/250

@ /11 and that in order to light your subject

in this environment, your fash is already at

ull power and you still don’t get enough light

out o it. Your rst move might be to move

the fash in closer, using the inamous inverse

square law to your advantage. Now let’s say that

this is not possible. I only your camera were

capable o synchronizing at 1/500 (i.e. one stop

aster), you’d be able to open up your aperture

one more stop. The ambient exposure would

be the same, but the photons rom your fash

could now travel through a wider aperture, so

it would eectively become twice as powerul.

This is one reason why a camera like the

Nikon D70, with its “mere” six megapixels

is still hot with o-camera fash shoot-

ers: it’s got a sync speed o 1/500.

This example also shows a second reason why

higher sync speeds can be interesting: the

higher your sync speed, the more wide open

your aperture can be or any given scene. I

you’re doing a portrait outdoors, you very oten

don’t want the background to be too d

ing. Wide open apertures such as /2.8

will give you that. But these apertures r

ast shutter speeds, or… your scene wil

be overexposed by the ambient light on

Now, beore you all rush over to eBay a

drive up the prices o used D70s even u

there’s some good news: many o the n

cameras and fashes can work in what’s

high-speed sync. Without getting into

at aster shutter speeds, both curtains o

your shutter travel together over the se

revealing only a slit o the sensor at a ti

More Advanced Techniques

.. Gong Beyond Sync Speed

From let to right: ash fred at 1/200, 1/320 and 1/500 o a second. Traditionally, fring a ash at speeds higher than the camera’s sync speed will cause a part o the rame to be blacked out. Norm

this is an unwanted eect, but i you know you won’t be needing that part o your image anyway, ‘overclocking’ your sync speed like this can be a way to achieve aster shutter speeds without hav

to resort to High Speed Sync.

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To build up your ambient exposure, this does not matter, but when you

throw fash into the equation, this is what gets you the black banding.

Simply put, high-speed sync does the ollowing: instead o r-

ing one big fash pulse, your fash will pulsate repeatedly, so each

slit o sensor that the two moving shutter curtains reveal will not

only receive ambient exposure, but also the right dose o fash expo-

sure. This way, fash-lit exposures o up to 1/8000 are possible!

High-speed sync isn’t only interesting or shallow depth o eld

photos, where the ast shutter speed is the by-product o the large

aperture you were ater. Ater all, you could also obtain that by put-

ting a neutral density lter (a light stopping lter) or, in a pinch,

a polarizer on your lens. These can also allow you to open up

your aperture without getting over 1/250th o a second.

When photographing ast action, such as certain sports

or the typical ice cube alling into a glass o water,

it’s the ast shutter speed that will be your primary

interest. Again, high-speed sync is the answer.

Unortunately, there’s no such thing as a ree lunch—

high-speed sync will cost you twice: rst o all, you’ll

need a more expensive brand (or brand-compatible)

fash and your camera has to support the eature, too.

Secondly, high-speed sync also costs you in terms o

total fash output. A fash at ull power in high-speed

sync will produce less light than at or below sync

speed, so you might need more fashes to get to the

same exposure. Still, it is a antastic eature to have

and allows or truly unleashed fash creativity.

The ability to go into high-speed sync could

be a reason or you to avour certain brand

fashes over their manual counterparts.

Some manuacturers have high-speed sync turned o

by deault on their cameras, even i the camera itsel

allows it. Check your camera manual. I always en-

able it on my cameras. Just know that it eats a lot o

power and that i your fash doesn’t give you the out

you’d expect rom it, there’s a big chance you were—

maybe inadvertently—working beyond sync speed.

The Nikon and Canon inrared wireless fash system w

discussed in Making Light allows or high-speed sync


... Hgh-Speed Sync – contnued


Nikon calls this technique Auto FP HighSpeed Sync. Canon reers to it as High-SpeedSync. Because that’s less o a mouthul, that’s

what we’ll call it rom here on in, too.

Case 2 in chapter 3 shows an

example o a dancer splashing

up water, where a shutter

speed o 1/2000 was used to

reeze the water drops.

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... Hgh-Speed Sync – Ths One Goes To /8000!


1 Using an 85 mm 1.4 or 1.8 at /11 is

actually a lot like driving a Porsche

on a supermarket parking lot. On a

Saturday. On the rst day o sales.

Ambient-only exposure against the sun, noon on

a sunny day. The subject is backlit and the ace

underexposed. Luckily, the umbrella that happened

to be standing by or the three ollowing shots acted

as a refector, otherwise the ace would have been

even darker. But there’s something else missing in

this portrait: catchlights.

Nikon D700 | 85mm /1.4G | 85mm

/2.8 @ 1/4000s | ISO 200

Lit with an umbrella’d fash at the traditional sync speed.

order to avoid overexposure, a relatively stopped down ap

o /11 was needed on this 85 mm 1.41. The umbrella puts

catchlight in the eyes, but notice how the small aperture m

the background busy and distracting.

Nikon D700 | 85mm /1.4G | 85mm | /11 @ 1/250s

1 SB-900 fred through a white umbrella

Virtually the same overall ambient level, only this time, hispeed sync was used. The aperture was opened up to /2.8

driving the shutter speed to a staggering 1/4000. Thanks to

wonders o High Speed Sync the background now is drea

blurry, and, along with the backlit hair, provides extra sepa

o the subject, a very willing and patient Van den Eynde Sr

Nikon D700 | 85mm /1.4G | 85mm | /2.8 @ 1/4000s

1 SB-900 fred through a white umbrella at ull manual power in

speed sync modefred through a white umbrella

Opening up the exposure (as simulated here inLightroom) by two stops would make the ace

look better, but the background now becomes

distractingly bright and the green loses a lot o

its pleasing colour saturation.

Nikon D700 | 85mm /1.4G | 85mm

/2.8 @ 1/4000s | ISO 200

2 extra stops added in Lightroom

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The new PocketWizard ControlTL system, consisting o the MiniTT1

transmitter & FlexTT5 transceiver, which we’ll discuss in the gear

chapter, is also compatible with Canon’s and Nikon’s high-speed

sync. Even better, PocketWizard has come up with a technology called

HyperSync (not to be conused with “normal” high-speed sync).

A rst advantage o this proprietary technology is that it allows you to

increase the sync speed o many cameras rom 1/250 to 1/500 (or even

slightly above) with less power loss than typical high-speed sync induces.

Another plus is that this technology can allow manual non-brand

fashes and bigger studio strobes to be used at higher than nor-

mal sync speeds, albeit at the cost o reduced fash output.

For more inormation on this revolutionary eature,

check out the PocketWizard website (hyperlink:)

http://www.pocketwizard.com/inspirations/technology/hypersync_psync/

In classical studio portrait lighting, you’ll generally learn

to work with three studio strobes: one as a main or key

light, a second one as a hair light and a third one as a

background light. In these cases, sometimes a refector

will be used to refect some light into the shadowed areas

the key light is causing. This is not written in stone, how-

ever: you might also decide to use a fash as a ll light.

Adding fashes enhances your options and lets you put

more depth into your images. Say you have a model in

dark clothes in ront o a dark background. In order to

separate her better rom the background, you could use

an extra light source to light the background separately

or light her rom behind (so-called rim lighting).

All the examples in part 1 o this eBook, Making

Light, used just one fash, mostly as a main light

or as a ll light, when the sun itsel acted as the

main light. Case 9 in volume 1 even showed you

how to use the setting sun as a separation light.

Still, even when you’re working outside, you’ll not

always have a setting sun handy to serve as a separ

light. In those cases, a second fash comes in handy

Make sure you’re comortable using one o-camer

beore adding a second and a third. I’d also advise

build up your set one fash at a time, like we expla

volume 1: start with the ambient and set it to the l

you want it to be at. Then add the rst fash and a

its power until it adds what you want to the scene

then add the second fash and repeat the procedur


... HyperSync ... Multple Flashes or More Control

.. Gong Beyond Sync Speed .. Workng wth Multple Flashes

^

I you think this was shot into the setting sun,

quickly head over to case 5.

http://www.pocketwizard.com/inspirations/technology/hypersync_fpsync/

http://www.pocketwizard.com/inspirations/technology/hypersync_fpsync/

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The Anatomy o a Multi-Flash Setup

There’s a reason why Nikon and Canonallow or up to three dierent groups in

their inrared triggering systems and why

the new PocketWizard ControlTL system

does so, too: three lights is a typical studio

setup. In this example, we’ve replicated this

setup using small fashes: one main light,

a.k.a. key light ( A), attached to a LumiQuest

SB III sotbox, one hair light (B), tted with

a Honl grid, and one background light (C),

equipped with a Rogue Grid rom ExpoIm-

aging. I’ve used a small sotbox because I

wanted the lighting to be sot but dramatic.

You could o course use a larger modier

and crank up the power o the fash or

a more open, high-key look. There are

countless other variations on this theme.


... Multple Flashes or More Control – contnued

.. Workng wth Multple Flashes

A typical three-light setup

main light ( A), one rim lig

(B), and one background l

(C). By assigning these thr

lights to separate groups

your triggering system, yo

change their power remo

rom your camera, or eve

some o the lights o alto

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As described beore, it’s good to tackle a multi-light

setup one by one. You start with any ambient expo-

sure you want to be present in the scene (in this case,

at 1/250 o a second, /14, and ISO 100, there was

no ambient light recorded in the picture. It’s a good

thing to be consistent in your groups: I always use

group A or the key light, B or the rim light and C

or the background light. I you’re working with the

PocketWizard ControlTL system, the AC3 ZoneCon-

troller is a great (and at $79/€79, relatively aordable)

accessory: it allows you to change the power settings

o up to three groups o fashes by turning a rotary

wheel, as opposed to diving into the menu o a com-

mander fash. It works very ast and eciently.

By working with a white background (I’ve used the Lastolite HiLite

here, but only as an ordinary white background, i.e. without ring

fashes into it as it’s supposed to be used and will be shown in para-

graph 2.2.3) and by dedicating a separate background fash to it, we

can make the background anywhere rom pure white to pure black

by varying the fash output (and the shutter speed, i necessary).

It’s also easy to change the atmosphere o the picture

by adding a colour gel to the background light.

Some studio photographers have dedicated (and expensive)

that allow them to project dierent patterns onto a backgro

order to make it look more organic. A ocusing system allow

choice between a sot or clearly outlined pattern. With some

mentation, you can do something similar much cheaper: by

any object in between your background fash and the backg

you can achieve similar results. Here I used some bamboo le

rom my garden. The closer you put your fash to this so-cal

gobo (rom ‘go-between’), the more diuse the shadows wil


... Multple Flashes or More Control – contnued


The ZoneController ts

on top o the MiniTT1

transmitter and lets you

quickly switch the settings

o up to three groups rom

o (0) to manual (M) or TTL

(A). The three rotary click-

wheels then allow you to

dial in the manual output

or the desired TTL fash

exposure compensation.

Putting a colour gel in ront o the background light ca

change the look o your picture. You can choose matchcontrasting colours. From let to right: Steel Green, cho

match the sweater, Follies Pink and Oklahoma Yellow

the Rogue Grid lter line.

Firing your background fash through a plant can mak

interesting organic shadow patterns on the backgroun

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


Nikon D700 | 24-70mm /2.8G | 26mm | /22 @ 1/250s | 3 SB900s at ull power triggered by a PocketWizard Plus II on a Lastolite TriFlash Sync.

1 . 2 . 2 .

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


Another reason or adding more fashes to

your light setup might be to combine them

into one more powerul light source. Doing

so gives you a higher total light output o

course, but even when you don’t need it,

you get aster recycle times because two

fashes only have to work hal as hard to

give the same output as one fash does!

1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32... Are you see-

ing a pattern here?

Noon on a sunny day is the most chal-

lenging time or o-camera fash, at

least when you don’t just want to

ll in the shadows but really want to

overpower the ambient sunlight.

The idea or this shot was to underexpose

the ambient light and then bring up the

dancer with a straight, hard fash. I useda PocketWizard Plus II to trigger my three

remote fashes, set to ull power, as I eared

the optical way o triggering might be un-

reliable in bright sunlight. Using the “old”

PocketWizards (or any o the standard cheap

radio triggers that don’t allow or higher

sync speeds) meant that I was limited to

a sync speed o 1/250. This meant in turn

that my aperture would have to be really

small (/22) to overpower the ambient light,

which would in turn severely limit the

eect o my fash, even at ull power. F/22

is a pretty small aperture or a fash to put

its photons through! So I lined up three

fashes on a light stand to camera let.

Going rom one ull-power fash to two

ull-power fashes will give you one extra

stop o light, i.e. you’ll be able to expose

your subject the same, whilst taking the

ambient exposure one stop urther down.

In other words: it will allow you to go rom

/4 to /5.6, or rom /16 to /22. Going

rom two to three fashes only adds hal

an extra stop. To add another ull stop,you’d need to add two more, not just one,

bringing the total to our. Want to add yet

another stop o light? You’ll need an extra

our, putting the total to eight, and so on...

When your fash is at ull power and

you still need more light, you have

to double the number o fashes or

every extra stop o light you want.

Adding fashes to your lighting setup

is one thing, but you also have to nd

a way o physically managing them. A

plethora o options exist, holding any

number rom two or three, to our and

even eight small fashes. We’ll look at

some options in the ‘Gear’ section.

Another challenge is to get all these fashes

triggered simultaneously. You might think

you need as many triggers as you have fash-

es, but there are workarounds – stay tuned.

I you stack up multiple fashes to unc-

tion as one stronger light source and

you don’t use a diuser o sorts, watchout or ugly multiple cast shadows. I

you have no choice, try to put them

as closely together as possible or pre-

pare or some Photoshop overtime!


... Multple Flashes or More Power


^Watch out with dual or triple undiused fas

the toughest skater would become araid o h

shadow when he suddenly appears to have

and our legs!

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Even when you’re not yet working at ull power, adding more fashes

to create a more powerul light source can be a good idea: dividing the

workload among several fashes will make it easier on each individual fash,

saving battery lie, increasing recycle time, and preventing overheating.

Adding up fashes like this does become costly ater a while,

especially i you work with brand fashes like Speedlights

or Speedlites. I you oten nd yoursel in scenarios like this, it

might be the time to invest in a portable strobe set with a bat-

tery pack, such as the Elinchrom Ranger Quadra or one o the other

systems we mention in 2.5 ‘Outgroing your small fashes’.


... Multple Flashes or More Power – contnued


The Elinchrom Ranger Quadra manages to pack 400 watt seconds (about the equivalent o our SB900s or 580 EX IIs) in

and lightweight package. For many photographers that start out with small fashes, this kit is the next step up. I you w

more power, almost every manuacturer o studio strobes has a battery pack, but those are beyond the scope o this eBo

Size can become an important characteristic

or choosing a fash when you start to workwith more than one: there’s a big dierence

between packing our SB 900s versus our

SB 700s, or example.

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


2 Gear

In volume , we saw that a complete o-camera starter fash set can cost as little as $250, including a manual fash, a fash bracket, and an umbrella. The good news is that you can do an awul lot with such a small kit.

In this chapter, we’ll cover some more gear, some o which is more expensive. As is oten the case in photography, the extramoney may buy you some extra picture quality but mostly, it buys you reliability and fexibility. In some cases, as with thehigh-speed sync enabled triggers, it also buys you the ability to shoot things like ast action you just could not do beore.

When working with the optical inrared trigger-

ing systems like Nikon’s CLS or Canon’s Wire-

less Flash System, which we discussed in Vol-

ume 1, you always have to make sure that the

inrared receiver points towards the command-

er unit. I necessary, use the tilting and swivel-

ling capabilities o your fash head and your

umbrella adapter to position both adequately.

A big advantage o this system is that it allows

or high-speed sync, which we discussed earlier.

Radio triggering, on the other hand, allows

you to put your fashes behind walls and at

distances o over 100 meters, but up until a

couple o years ago, worked in manual mode

only, requiring you to walk over to every

remote fash again and again to change its

power setting. Also, up until recently, no

radio triggers supported high-speed sync.

Now, there are a growing number o tech-

nologies that allow you to combine the

advantages o remote manual or even TTL

control and high-speed sync with the in-

creased triggering and reliability radio o

One is called RadioPopper and another is

PocketWizard MiniTT1 & FlexTT5 system

Each system has its air share o users. In

eBook, I’ll limit mysel to the PocketWiza

system as it’s the one I am using mysel.

.. Advanced Trggerng Systems

In 2009, PocketWizard, the industry standard in manual radio fash

triggers, introduced their MiniTT1 and FlexTT5, respectively a com-

mander and a commander/receiver unit, which are compatible with

TTL and high-speed sync. These units translate the optical signal o acommander or master fash into radio signals whilst maintaining all

the power settings and TTL and high-speed sync inormation.

... PocketWzard MnTT, FlexTT & AC ZoneController

The PocketWizard MiniTT1 transmitter

and FlexTT5 transceiver (which can act

as a receiver as well as a transmitter).

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


An optional AC3 ZoneController even eliminates

the need to use a commander altogether and enables

you to control the power with a set o intuitive

old-school (but very high-tech) buttons and dials.

Originally only available or Canon, there’s now

also a Nikon version. They are rmware-upgradeable

through USB and also programmable to some

extent. They’re priced only slightly higher than

the original PocketWizards and oer ar more

fexibility. As lots o photographers are trading in

their “old” PocketWizard Plus IIs or these new

units, you may be able to get a second-hand bar-

gain on the old ones. The new PocketWizards are

sometimes reerred to as the ControlTL system.

At the time o writing, Hong Kong-based Phottix had

just announced a similar, somewhat cheaper alterna-

tive or Canon: the Odin fash trigger also oers

remote Manual control, TTL and High Speed Sync.

These new triggering systems allow or unprecedent-

ed ease o use and creativity through higher than

normal shutter speeds but can easily set you back

hundreds o dollars, especially i you have multiple

fashes (see also the next paragraph or a great tip, by

the way). Don’t orget they are but a link in the total

chain: don’t break the bank on triggers alone, leave

some room or modiers because they’re also impor-

tant infuencers o the nal look o your picture.

radiopopper.com| pocketwizard.com | phottix.com

In the Flash Buying 101 section o Volume

1, one o the criteria is whether the fash

can be slaved. This does not reer to the

inrared proprietary Nikon and Canon

triggering systems, but to a much simpler

way o triggering: simply setting up the

remote fash as a “slave” that will re rom

the moment it sees another fash. I you

have more fashes than you have triggers,

setting up a compatible fash this way is

an alternative to buying more triggers.

Note, however, that you’ll have to set

the power on your fash manually and,

unless your optical slave can account

or TTL pre-fashes, like the LumoPro

LP160 does, you’ll have to work all

manual on the rest o your fashes, too

(otherwise, your slaves will re when

they see the pre-fash). Also, slavi

fash excludes using High Speed S

Finally, it’s evident that this type

triggering does not work at all du

weddings or other events where p

are happily snapping away with t

own cameras and little built-in f

Most fashes are programmed to go into standby mode ater some amount o t

Getting them out o standby usually requires pushing one o the buttons, whic

quite a nuisance with remote fashes. Thereore, i your fashes allow or this, I

you to change the standby mode to never: my fashes stay on until I turn them

2 Gear

... PocketWzard MnTT, FlexTT & AC ZoneController – contnued ... Optcally Slavng a Remote Flash

... Changng Your Flash’s Standby Tmng

.. Advanced Trggerng Systems

The Lumo

is a relativ

manual-on

that oers

unctionali

can even b

disregard t

fash that

Canon use

proprietary

systems, s

res when

^An AC3 ZoneController sits on top o the TT1

transmitter, which in turn slides into the

hotshoe o the DSLR. The AC3 setup is less

bulky than using a fash as a commanderon top o a TT1. On the other hand, in those

cases where you also want to add some ll

fash coming rom your camera position,

using an actual fash as a commander

instead o the AC3 can be an alternative.

http://www.radiopopper.com/

http://www.pocketwizard.com/

http://www.phottix.com/

http://www.phottix.com/

http://www.pocketwizard.com/

http://www.radiopopper.com/

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


In fash photography, it’s generally not

the fashes that break the bank, it’s the

modiers that suck away most o your

precious cash. From the aordable $20

beginner’s umbrellas to the $5,000

parabolic ones—there are modiers or

every taste and budget and we can’t

even begin to list them all here. So I

will just introduce you to some that

I’ve been using mysel to my satisac-

tion. Which ones you’ll want will

depend on your style and budget. But

when you’re stuck or cash, just read

the white-on-blue advice at the right

and then skip straight to chapter 3!

In volume 1, we discussed an incredibly

useul, light, and cheap light modier: an

umbrella. For the money, it can’t be beat.

They exist in all sizes and even the big PLMs

(parabolic light modiers), which can have

diameters o more than 80 inches (two me-

ters), are still relatively aordable. Because

o their size, PLMs are great or group shots

or lling in shadows over a broad area.

Yet, or all their qualities, there are some

disadvantages to umbrellas, the most impor-

tant o which are spill and control—light

can easily go past the umbrella or bounce

around, which not only draws power but

also means the exposure o the rest o

the environment is less easy to control.

A logical next step is to use sotboxes.

They are also sotening modiers, but

they don’t have the spill umbrellas

have, so they oer you more control in

terms o directing their sot light. This

control can even be enhanced by adding

a so-called grid or egg crate that cre-

ates sot yet highly directional light.

We already discussed a highly interest-

ing little sotbox, the LumiQuest SB

III, in Volume 1. Here, I’ll introduce

you to our more I oten use.

The graph shows the sotboxes in scale.

The little square on the let (1) is a bare

fash head. The yellow oval (number 3) is

an average human head. It’s easy to see

that no matter how close you put your

bare fash to a person (e.g. or portraiture),

it’ll always be a small, hard light source.

At 8 x 9 inches, the LumiQuest SB III (2) is

still a small sotbox in absolute terms, but it’s

20 times bigger than a bare fash and about

the size o a human head. When placed close

enough, this little sotbox really becomes a

sot light source. The next step up is a Las-

tolite Ezybox (the 54 x 54 cm version) (4).

Then we have the 28-inch Westcott Apollo

(5) and its big brother, the 50-inch Westcott

Apollo (7). The 30-inch FourSquare (6) is

part o a complete multi-fash bracket system

and will be discussed in paragraph 2.4.2.

2 Gear

... Sotenng Moders: Sotboxes

.. More ModersAnything that’s refective or translucent c

be a light modier when you re a fash or through it: that includes shower curtai

bed sheets, lamp shades, a groom’s shirtpiece o paper, the white back o a poster

2 3 4 5 6

A grid or

egg crate.

Shown

here is the

one or theLastolite

Ezybox.

1 .

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


^The Lastolite Ezybox exists in three sizes.Since it can only be used with one fash,

it’s best used away rom heavy sunlight. As

the fash controls remain accessible, it’s a

good system i you use optical triggering or

manual radio triggers that require you to

change output power on the fash. It sets up

and olds down very easily into a ball-shaped

package (once you get the hang o it). It’s a

very polyvalent modier that you can use or

headshots and, in a pinch, waist-up portraits.

^I’ve attached two small p“male” Velcro to both sid

Westcott so I can fip the

diuser backwards and k

it rom fapping around i

wind. The picture in case

lit this way.

^The Westcott Apollo sotboxes are dierent in that they old like an umbrella, yet set up like asotbox. The fash is placed inside, which means you really should use a radio trigger (although,

used inside, it might be possible to trigger it even with an optical signal). I you want to avoid

having to open the ront diuser each time you want to change the output power, you’ll want a

radio trigger that is capable o remotely controlling power, such as the latest PocketWizards or

RadioPoppers. The advantage o having the fash inside is that you can put multiple fashes on

a multi-fash bracket. Also, as the fashes ace the silver refective surace, you can remove the

ront diuser i you want an edgier look or i you simply want to maximize your light output.

One o my avourite modiers is the 28-inch Westcott Apollo (5). It clos-

es like an umbrella and can be attached to almost any umbrella adapter.

Lastly, I’ll occasionally use a 50-inch Westcott Apollo. It shares not only

its name with the lunar module but almost its size as well! It produces

extremely sot light. I use this sotbox a lot when photographing babies,

toddlers, and children. Because o its size, it produces a big zon

relatively consistent and sot light so my subjects can move aro(as they tend to do) and still be in the lit zone. Unortunately,

be tilted much on a normal light stand without using a so-call

arm. O course, you can ask an assistant to tilt it or you i nec

2 . 2 . 1

1 .

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


^This was shot with the 50-inch Apollo. Although it looks like a studio shot, it was done at a riend’s house. The Apollo was behind me and slightly

above my head (I was kneeling as well, to be at the same height as the child). I triggered the fash behind me with a PocketWizard Plus II. I you don’t

move your fash and your subject all that much, you can just leave your fash power as it is, so there’s no need to open the cover o the sotbox a lot.

Two additional fashes were used to make the background white. (The walls were grey.) I could have made the grey wall white with just the power

o the two fashes as discussed in “Another Brick in the Wall” in chapter 2.2.3., but I decided to gaer-tape a white sheet to the wall to make lie (andrecycling times) easier on my fashes. In non-studio cases such as this, where you have less control, I just try to make sure the area immediately

surrounding my subject is white, without that white refecting too much onto the back o my subject. That way I can easily clean up the rest o the

background in Photoshop or even Lightroom without having to make complex selections around the hair and clothes.

In a pinch, I could have used just one fash on the background, hiding it behind my subject. With a moving subject however, that’s a guaranteed recipe

or extra post-processing work—cloning out a light stand that suddenly grows out o the subject’s head.

One advantage o shooting on a white background is that you can make composite pictures like these, or ool people into thinking that your riends

are blessed with quadruplets!

2 . 2 . 1

I’ve only listed the sotboxes I’ve been satisactorily using mysel, but you’ll nd countless others online with

new ones added on a weekly basis. No doubt there is one to suit your own budget and size requirements.

jwestcott.com | lumiquest.com | lastolite.com | lightwaredirect.com (FourSquare)

^The setup shot show

you don’t need a stu

studio lights to get s

quality output.

http://www.fjwestcott.com/

http://www.lumiquest.com/

http://www.lastolite.com/

http://www.lightwaredirect.com/



http://www.lumiquest.com/

http://www.fjwestcott.com/

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


As noted in Volume 1, all that sot light

magic does become boring ater a while. Those

modiers also eat up a lot o precious fash

power, especially when working outside.

Sometimes, using just a straight fash can create

very dramatic portraits. Zooming your fash to

its maximum zoom setting will create a spotlight

eect. As an added bonus, your eective fash

power will increase with your zoom setting.

I you want to control the beam o your light

even more, you can use grids, snoots, and fags.

Snoots are cone-shaped modiers that allow

you to ocus the light even tighter. Grids are

another way to concentrate your light.

2 Gear

... Restrctng Moders: Grds, Snoots, Flags and More

.. More Moders

The raw power o a zoomed fash, triggered

in ull-power high-speed sync mode at

1/5000 o a second. Post-processing took less

than a minute in Lightroom, using one o my

avourite presets rom X-Equals.com and

some sweeps with a local adjustment brush.

http://www.x-equals.com/

http://www.x-equals.com/

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


Grids are great or rim-lighting

people to separate them rom the

background. The grids not only con-

centrate the light but also help to keep

it out o the lens, avoiding fare.

Most o this stu is pretty easy to make

yoursel (black gaer tape, glue, a pair

o scissors, cardboard boxes or tubes and

black straws are really all you need), but

i you’ve got two let hands like me, you

just get them ready-made. David Honl is

a well-known supplier o lighting modi-

ers or small fashes. ExpoImaging also

produces some interesting modiers: the

Rogue FlashBender system consists o

panels o dierent sizes that are white

on one side and black on the other. They

have metallic inserts in them, allowing

you to bend them into dierent light

shaping tools: fags, refectors (more use-ul or on-camera fash), and snoots.

2 Gear

... Restrctng Moders: Grds, Snoots, Flags and More – contnued

.. More Moders

^A grid (shown here rom Honl Photo). Use the

tilting and swivelling capacities o your fash

and adapter to make the orientation o the

grid match the orientation o the subject you

want to rim-light.

T̂wo grids and one small sotbox held by an assistant were used to create this in

portrait in what was a very crowded living room. Eliminating the clutter brings

on the child. Two gridded rim lights (ideally, I would use the same grid let and r

separate him rom the background. The small sotbox gives some rontal ll ligh

puts the oh-so-important catchlight in the eyes.

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


ExpoImaging also produces the Rogue

Grid, an ingenious three-in-one

grid that lets you to turn your fash

into a 16-, 25-, or 45-degree spot.

When working with these restrict-

ing modiers, correct placement

o your fash is paramount. It’s really a game o inches and degrees:

tilting your fash ve degrees to the wrong side may result in it miss-

ing the subject completely. I you want to see whether the light o

a restricting modier will reach your subject, all you have to do is

have your subject look at the fash rom their position and ask them

i they can see the actual white o the fash head through the grid. I

they can see the fash, the fash can see them: it’s a two-way street.

With o-camera fash becoming more popular, ever more modiers

abound, some o which are adaptations o modiers typically ound

on bigger studio fash systems. So, now there are miniature Speedlight

versions o refectors, barn doors, and ring fashes, which are—in their

expensive big fash version—very popular with ashion photographers.

I have no personal experience with them but David Hobby, godathero the whole o-camera small fash movement and ounder o the

highly inormative www.strobist.com website, is known or using

a ring fash as an on-axis (i.e. coming rom the camera) ll light.

Beauty dishes are another avourite modier o ashion

and portrait photographers worldwide. They used to

exist only or big studio fashes but are now being de-

veloped in versions that are adapted to small fashes.

Inversely, manuacturers o big studio modiers are alsostarting to oer adapters that allow you to attach your

small fash to these bigger modiers. Did I mention these

are exciting times to be a small-fash photographer?

honlphoto.com (small fash grids, fags, snoots, and

expoimaging.com (Rogue FlashBender line o fash

fags, snoots, gels, Ray Flash ringfash)

rosco.com (gels)

lumodi.com (small fash beauty dishes)

orbisfash.com (small fash ringfash)

2 Gear

... Restrctng Moders: Grds, Snoots, Flags and More – contnued

.. More Moders

A beauty dish o

fash. Shown he

the ones rom L

available in 11-,

18-inch sizes.

http://www.honlphoto.com/

http://www.expoimaging.com/

http://www.rosco.com/

http://www.lumodi.com/

http://www.orbisflash.com/

http://www.orbisflash.com/

http://www.lumodi.com/




7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


Is it a background? Is it a portable white wall? No, it’s the Lastolite

HiLite. This is a modier that’s in a category o its own. It’s a 6-by-7-

oot squarish structure that’s translucent on one side and pops up like

a refector (and olds back the same way2). It’s about one oot wide,

which not only allows it to stand on itsel when there’s no wind, but

also allows or two fashes to be red into it rom each o its sides

(don’t point the fashes to the ront, but to the white refective surace

on the inside back, to avoid hotspots). This turns it into a portable

white background, simpliying high-key portraiture work on location

(see also the inset “Another Brick in the Wall” on the next page).

But, thinking slightly outside the box reveals some other ap-

plications: when you place it to the side o or at a 45-degree

angle towards your subject, it becomes a gigantic sotbox,

imitating a huge window. Interesting or group shots.

O course, you can also make a DIY version o this by just using

a shower curtain on a ramework (or in a doorway) and putting

your fashes behind that. You’ll lose some o the evenness o the

light, and you might look slightly less proessional, but you’ll save

a couple o hundred dollars. See the “100-Dollar Studio” paragraphin the interview with Bert Stephani at the end o this book.

lastolite.com

2 Gear

... Portable Hgh-key Background

.. More Moders

The Lastolite HiLite

is a collapsible, sel-

standing backgroundinto which you can re

one or preerably two

fashes to make a pure

white background.

2 Setting up is straightorward, but

back into place takes some practice

ortunately, YouTube’s your riend w

couple o great videos. Just do a sea

“Lastolite HiLite olding” and you’ll

the advice you need.

2 . 3 .



7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


2 .

This job taught me never to assume anything when setting

out or a location shoot. The assignment was a very typical

one: a law rm needed portraits o its senior partners, pho-

tographed on a white background, or use on their website.

Normally, in cases like this, i you haven’t brought your

own white background, you just position your subject

in ront o the brightest wall in the oce and then use

a dash o fash to turn that background into pure white.

Ater all, every oce has a white wall somewhere, right?

Wrong! There wasn’t a white background to be spotted in

this whole building (a pretty big one at that). All the walls

were made out o big, medium-grey concrete blocks.

So I put up two fashes to “nuke” the medium-grey back-

ground into white. In doing so, I had to turn my fashesmuch higher in power than I would have had to with a

white wall. Moreover, I needed to dial my fashes higher

still to turn the even darker cement between the blocks

into white! Power issues aside, the real concern in cases

like this is that the higher you have to dial your fashes,

the more light will bounce back onto the back o your

subject and the rest o the room. This complicates the

rest o your lighting setup, creates the risk o fare, and

possibly even makes your subject’s back too bright, lead-

ing to washed-out shoulders, hair, and cheekbones.

Remembering the inverse square law, the trick is to put

your subject ar enough rom the wall (i possible) and try

to avoid direct spill light coming rom your back

fash(es) (using fags, or instance), so that you c

the wall and the subject separately and give each

amount o power that’s needed or the job at ha

exposing the grey wall into white and correctly

the subject. In this case, the subject was lit by a

Ezybox to camera let and a refector to camera

Using fashes and remembering the undamenta

lowed me to pull this one o.3 But, I now carry

HiLite with me on those assignments where I do

know what kind o walls will be closing in on m

The HiLite allows me to create white walls when

like, with a minimum o power. As the fash hea

put inside it, and the sides can be closed with zi

pers, there’s no risk o unwanted spill, either.

A cheaper way is to work with a (portable) white

less background. The denitive internet resourc

is Zack Arias’ three-part “White Seamless Tutoria

zackarias.com (there’s a link to the White Seam

less Tutorial rom the Popular Posts section).

3In this case I made sure that the ba

area immediately surrounding my

white. I I had that, I knew that I cou

outer parts o the rame to white in

without having to make complex se

Another Brckn the Wall…

http://www.zackarias.com/

http://www.zackarias.com/

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


I you’ve looked at the images in Volume

1, you know I preer umbrellas or port-

ability, aordability, and ease o setup.

That’s why I always take one with me,even when I’m travelling light. How-

ever, or pure quality o light and the

shape o the catchlights, I, like many

other photographers, preer a sotbox.

Its use needn’t be conned to just

a main light: cover up the let and

right third with black cloth and you

have an instant so called striplight,

great or rim-lighting people.

Gaer-tape a cross onto the ace o your

sotbox and it mimics the antique win-

dows you nd in old mansions. Or, some-

thing I picked up rom Bert Stephani’sMotivational Light DVD and already

mentioned in passing in Volume 1: cut out

a gure or a number rom a piece o black

Styrooam that’s the size o your sotbox

and use that to create original catchlights.

But there’s more: just like you can use the

HiLite as a gigantic sotbox instead o the

background it’s actually designed to be,

you can use a medium to large sotbox as

a highly portable mini white background

or tight portraits, as illustrated below.

You can also experiment with the positiono your light source and use a technique

called eathering: let the bulk o the light

pass by your subject and work with the

“edges” o the light, where the light al-

lo is more pronounced and dramatic.

Needless to say, you’re better o do-

ing this inside—outside you normally

need all the power you can get…

2 Gear

.. Thnkng Outsde the Sotbox

Who says the biggest modier always has to be the main light?

Here I used a 50-inch Westcott Apollo as a background light

and the (by comparison) tiny LumiQuest SB III as a main light.

Don’t let the wide-angle setup shot ool you: the main light is

pointing down, and the model is standing very close to it, butnot under it. We’re working in the allo zone o the light here.

You can also see I’ve put some gaer tape on the sotbox to

minimize hotspots on the orehead and the bridge o the nose.

This lighting style, where the light is above your model, is called butterfy lighting, because o the

butterfy-shaped shadows it casts under the nose.

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


We already covered the basic use o gels (or lters, as they’re

also called) in Volume 1, where we put a CTO lter (colour

temperature orange) on a fash to make it match the colour tem-

perature o ambient light such as a household light bulb.

However, you can also use gels or creative eects, as case 7 in

chapter 3 o this book points out. Featured photographer Jürgen

Doom, one o the photographers interviewed in chapter 4, oten

creatively uses gels in his work. He cuts the gels or his Speedlights

out o bigger sheets, and attaches Velcro to the ends. He does so

at the ront side and the reverse side. That way, he can stack two

quarter CTOs together to make a hal CTO. I you’re not o the

DIY variety, there’s a wide choice available commercially, too.

Honl Photo has dierent sets o gels ranging rom purely

practical to moody. These gels have (male) Velcro attached

to them so they are compatible with the Honl Speed Strap

(or any fash onto which you’ve put (emale) Velcro).

Rosco, typically a supplier o large gels or studio and cin-

ematographic use, have a so-called Strobist Collection.

Rogue FlashBenders also have two series o gels, one generic and one

or use with their Rogue Grid. A nice touch is that each gel has a men-

tion o how many -stops o power it “eats up,” so those working manu-

ally know immediately by how much they have to crank up their fash.

When you use fashes with gels at high-power settings, be careul

not to melt the gels, as your fash head can become quite hot.

honlphoto.com | rosco.com | expoimaging.com (Rogue Gels)

2 Gear

... Colour Gels

.. More Useul Stu I you’re not bankrupt by now or you have a birthday wish list to write,I’ll quickly point out some other things that might come in handy.

Gels can be used to alter the

colour temperature o your

fash. The lower fash does nothave a gel applied to it. Put on

a CTO gel as I did in the top

fash and you can have it pass

as the setting sun!







7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


I you want to combine multiple fashes into a single, more powerul light source, you’ll need a bracket that can hold them all. Below are but a ew o a huge oering.

Just remember that you’ll also have to

trigger all these fashes in some way. The

most versatile (but also most expensive)

way is to equip each fash with its own

trigger. More economically, you can set

up just one fash with a trigger and re

the others as slaves, i they support this

(see 2.1.2.), although in that case you

lose that ancy high-speed sync option!

Alternatively, the TriFlash ex-

ists in a more expensive TriFlash

Sync version that lets you trigger

three fashes with just one trigger,

albeit in manual-only mode (and

also without high-speed sync).

I high-speed sync is important and you

don’t want to ork out the money or as

many triggers as you have fashes, you

can use Nikon’s or Canon’s own inrared

triggering system to trigger remote fash-

es. We talked about this in depth in Vol-

ume 1 and also discussed the limitations

o this when working in plain sunlight.

As it’s paramount that your inrared

signal can be picked up by the remote

fash, some modiers (such as umbrellas

or the FourSquare, the back o w

be opened to allow the inrared

to pass) are more suitable than

When using any o these multi

setups bare, watch out or ugly

triple, or quadruple cast shadow

Sometimes, there’s just no place

put the traditional bracket/ligh

combo. In these cases, having a

Manrotto Justin Clamps, Super

or Magic Arms can come in real

2 Gear

... Mult-Flash Brackets and Clamps

.. More Useul Stu

A Manro

that allowattach a f

door, a br

tree, and

^The Lovegrove Gemini rom

well-known UK o-camera fashphotographer and workshop leader

Damien Lovegrove is a sturdy

bracket that accommodates two

fashes (lovegroveconsulting.com).

The FourSquare holds—you guessed it—our fashes

and there’s even an add-on piece that allows you to add

our more to a mind- (and wallet-)blowing total o eight.

The FourSquare block itsel costs about $100, and can

be used with an umbrella. However, the more popularoption is a $269.95 kit that includes a proprietary 30-

inch sotbox as well. The whole setup breaks down

nicely into a 1 kg, 18-inch carrying pouch. I you add the

cheapest manual third-party fashes (like the Yongnuo

ones), you can be all set or about $600, which isn’t bad

or so much portable power (lightwaredirect.com).

I you want to use high-speed sync and thus need top-

o-the-line brand fashes, the cost increases veold, notincluding any triggers. Sports photographer Dave Black

(daveblackphotography.com) uses this high-end setup

a lot when photographing ast-paced action.

^The Lastolite TriFlash

holds three fashes.Shown here is the Sync

version (lastolite.com)

http://www.lovegroveconsulting.com/


http://www.daveblackphotography.com/





http://www.lovegroveconsulting.com/

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


I you oten shoot outdoors in bright sun,

you know how dicult it is to inspect your

LCD. Sure enough, most o the time you

can check your histogram even i the sun’s

too bright to check the actual picture, but

your histogram won’t tell you i your fash

hit the right part o your image. That’s

where the Hoodman Loupe with its built-

in diopter adjustment comes in handy.

Still, even with a Hoodman Loupe, I’d

advise you to evaluate your pictures on

a bigger screen as soon as possible.

hoodmanusa.com

Neutral density lters allow you to

block light. They’re handy when you

want to work with wide open aper-

tures in bright sunlight or when you

want to use slower shutter speeds,

to picture movement as a fow. With

regards to o-camera fash, they

can be interesting or keeping your

shutter speed below sync speed, e.g.

when you’re using a non-high-speed-

sync compatible fash or triggeringsystem. The advantage o the vari-

able lters is that they can block a

range o light, e.g. rom two to eight

stops, just by turning the lter ring.

In a pinch, a polarizing lter will also

work to cut down your shutter speed.

I use the Fader ND MK II by Light

Crat Workshop because it’s relatively

aordable, but other options exist.

lightcratworkshop.com

Why on earth do I mention a portable printer in the gear section o a book on o-camera fash? W

you’re into photographing people, especially in remote places, it’s always nice i you can give an i

ate thank you to your impromptu models. To that eect, I carry a Polaroid Pogo printer with me.

broken promises o emailing or sending pictures. I owe many o my pictures to the ice-breaking q

o this printer. Have a look at case 9 and try to nd the Pogo print playing hide and seek in the im

polaroid.com

2 Gear

... Hoodman Loupe ... (Varable)Neutral Densty Flter

... Portable Prnter

.. More Useul Stu

2

http://www.hoodmanusa.com/

http://www.lightcraftworkshop.com/

http://www.polaroid.com/

http://www.polaroid.com/

http://www.lightcraftworkshop.com/

http://www.hoodmanusa.com/

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


Since o-camera fash is very

much about portability, I want

my entire outt to be as trans-

portable as possible. In Volume

1, I showed you my minimalist

travel setup. Here you can see

the setup I use or commercial

assignments. All my portable

fash gear ts nicely into this

ThinkTank Airport TakeO. My

photo gear then gets packed

in the Speed Racer waist belt. I

chose the Airport TakeO be-

cause it combines the comort

o a rolling bag with the ability

to use it as an impromptu back-

pack or those harder-to-reach

locations, such as the rootop

terrace that was the location o

the picture eatured in case 5.

thinktankphoto.com

2 Gear

..6. Packng It All

.. More Useul Stu

SB 900 (x )

SB 900 x Honl Speed StrapHonl Gels

SB 700

PocketWzard Plus II (not shown)

PocketWzard TT Zone Controller AC

Westcott CollapsbReversble Umbrell

Manrotto Nano Lght Sta

PocketWzard TT Flex

Manrotto Justn Clamp

Honl Speed Grds (x )

Westcott Apollo 8 nch(strapped to the sde, not shown)

Gaer Tape

Umbrella Bracket

Lastolte Trfash Sync

Cover ld - nsde (not shown): Arport TakeO Ran Cover, Pencls & Pens, Speedlght Stands & Rogue Gels, Spare Batteres, Rogue Flashbenders, Mscellaneous Smal l Items

Cover ld - outsde (not shown): Lumquest LT SotBox, nch MacBook Pro, Backdrop Cloth

2 G

http://www.thinktankphoto.com/

http://www.thinktankphoto.com/

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


We’ve looked at various tools and brackets that

allow you to combine multiple fashes into a

more powerul light source, and there are spe-

cic reasons why that may be more interesting

than using a single studio strobe with a battery

pack. The rst is that you can use (any number

o) compatible small fashes in high-speed sync,

which allows or sync speeds up to 1/8000.

The second is that when you’re done, you

can break that multi-Speedlight rig backdown into individual fashes that you can

use separately. This is something you obvi-

ously can’t do with one big strobe.

However, there are some inconveniences, too…

• There’s the multiple shadow problem when

the fashes are used bare. It’s better to use

modiers, but they eat up part o the light

you were looking to add when adding more

than one fash in the rst place. Catch 22!

• Unless you’re using cheaper manual fashes or

second-hand ones, the price tag runs up quickly.

• I you use these setups to overpower the sun-

light, you’ll likely use them at ull power. Con-

tinuous ull power use will not only drain your

batteries very quickly, but might also damage

your fash or at least trigger its thermal protec-

tion. It’s not unny watching your fash go into

a 10-minute R&R in the middle o a shoot.

• There are a number o other practical issues as

well: at our batteries per fash, the number o

batteries you have to carry and recharge adds

up quickly, too. You can o course use dedicated

battery packs, but that in turn adds to the

overall price tag. Weight also becomes an issue:

one small fash has a size and weight advantage

over a studio strobe, but three or more don’t.

Once you leave the realm o small hotshoe

fashes and start looking or aordable, portable

studio strobes, you’ll nd an overwhelming

choice and you’ll notice that the concept o

portability and aordability varies greatly rom

one manuacturer to another. Going into detail

alls beyond the scope o this eBook. On the

next page, I just want to mention a couple o

systems that seem interesting rom a price,

perormance, and portability standpoint and

thereore seem well-suited as a logical next

step or someone looking or a little more.

2 Gear

.. Outgrowng Your Small FlashesThe more you evolve in your use o o-camera fash, the more you’ll demand o yoursel and your small fashes.Soon, you’ll want to use them or things they weren’t really designed or, like overpowering sunlight outdoors.

2 G

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


The rst is the Elinchrom Ranger Quadra. It consists o a very small and lightweight

(smaller and lighter than a hotshoe fash, in act) fash head rated at 400 watt

seconds and a relatively lightweight battery pack. The two together weigh in at

less than our kg. Power levels can be remotely set through the custom Elinchrom

Skyport triggers and there are ways to integrate the Quadra into a small fash setup.

Another recent addition to the realm o porta

lightweight fash systems is the TritonFlash L

ium Strobe Kit rom Photofex. It packs a 300

head and a long-lie rechargeable lithium bat

into a lightweight 5 lb package. While it can

triggered remotely without cables, the power

to be set on the fash head. This can be incon

ient when your fash is up high on a light sta

and you need to change its power requently.

On the other hand, this architec

allows or two fashes to

be red at diere

power levels b

the same batThe second is the 640 Ws Einstein fash head rom Paul C. Bu with a Vagabond Mini battery pack.

The fash head is bigger and heavier than the Ranger Quadra, but the battery itsel is smaller and light-

er, making the total weight about the same. One thing I like about this system is the act that—using

an optional PocketWizard PowerMC2 receiver—its power can also be remotely set and it can be used

together with hotshoe fashes in a PocketWizard MiniTT1, FlexTT5, and AC3 triggering environment.

Just remember, there is not one tool that will be right or all jobs. And it needn’t

be an either/or proposition. Both these systems oer ways o integrating any

small fashes you already own into your setup as additional light sources.

elinchrom.com | paulcbu.com | photofex.com

2 Gear

.. Outgrowng Your Small Flashes – contnued

3 di

http://www.elinchrom.com/

http://www.paulcbuff.com/

http://www.photoflex.com/

http://www.photoflex.com/

http://www.paulcbuff.com/

http://www.elinchrom.com/

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


3 Ten Case Studies

3 . 1 .

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Let’s start this chapter with the bonus

picture we ended Volume 1 with.

As a photographer, I mostly live on Aperture Prior-

ity Lane. The lower end o Aperture Priority Lane, to be

more precise. I love playing with depth o eld and as a

consequence, have paid more than a air share o money

or so-called ast lenses. Yet, occasionally, I’ll move to the

upper end o Aperture Priority Lane, /22 territory.

The general idea or this picture is similar to the one in case 9

o Volume 1. It’s shot into the sun, but here I really wanted the

sun in the picture. In order to achieve the starburst eect, you

have to use an aperture o /16 or smaller (i.e. higher -stop).

I also underexposed the ambient light to get

more detail in the sky. The more underexposed,

the better the star pattern would show.

The LCD on my camera helped me to gure out the ambi-

ent settings. Then I manually set the power o my fash. I

actually wanted to light the skater with an umbrella rst,

because I thought the sot umbrella light would contrast

nicely with the sun and the subject. Unortunately, the

umbrella wasted too much precious fash power and I

didn’t have a sotbox with me. I did bring one with me to

experiment one week later, leading to the picture o case

4, which also became the cover picture o Volume 1.

Overpowering the sun (remember, we’re not work-

ing at the normal ambient exposure the camera sug-

gests, but going darker than that, which requires a higher

aperture and/or a aster shutter speed) really stresses your

fash. Especially when you’re working in high-speed

sync mode, like I did here at 1/320 o a second.

I even had to add another fash, also at ull power. Even when

it’s not necessary (as it was or this photo), adding a second

fash can come in handy because it cuts your recycle time in

hal, avoids overheating, and saves those precious batteries.

The picture isn’t completely sharp (there’s a typi-

cal blur rozen by fash around his legs) but I don’t nd

this a problem here: it adds to the eeling o speed.

I I had wanted to reeze him completely, I could

have used a aster shutter speed, oset by an in-

crease in ISO. (I couldn’t oset it by opening up the

lens, as I needed that aperture or the starburst.)

3 Ten Case Studies

.. When One Lght Just Won’t Do: Sunburst at Noon

Shooting at /22 on a sunny day stressyour fash a lot. In these cases a secon

or even third fash comes in handy.

3 Ten Case Studies

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This kind o photography really departs rom

reality: the wide angle exaggerates perspective,

the fash and the underexposed background add

a surreal aspect, and the concrete, urban environ-

ment is just screaming or a gritty post-processing.

And so I allow mysel to post-process these

pictures slightly more dramatically than I

would a typical wedding or portrait.

The heavy liting was done in Lightroom

with a preset. As oten, the preset was too

heavy or my liking so I applied it to a virtual

copy instead o to the original. I then sent

the original and the virtual copy over to

Photoshop via the Photo > Edit In > Open

as Layers in Photoshop command. Chang-

ing the opacity o the top layer allowed me

to blend the two versions to my liking.

I then added a Silver Eex Pro black and white

conversion layer on top o the colour layer

and changed its blending mode to Sot Light.

This gives the slightly desaturated look. I

you don’t have Silver Eex Pro, a Photoshop

B&W adjustment layer will also work.

As I was in Photoshop anyway, I decided to

do my dodging and burning there (a very

important part o any post-processing),

selectively lightening and darkening ar-

eas o the picture. I also added midtone

contrast to increase the texture o the

concrete. As you can see rom the screen-

shot, I like to keep everything on separate

layers. It’s heavier, but more fexible.

3 Ten Case Studies

.. When One Lght Just Won’t Do: Sunburst at Noon – contnued

Make your post-processing complement your lighting:

graphic pictures can take graphic post-processing.

3 . 2 .

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Nikon D700 | VR 16-35mm /4G | 18mm | /6.3 @ 1/2000s | ISO 400 | PocketWizard MiniTT1 & AC3 ZoneController on camera

1 ash camera let, 1 ash with LumiQuest SB III sotbox camera right, PocketWizard FlexTT5 triggers.

Lord o the Glmmerngs:

Freezing Water with High-Speed Syn

3 Ten Case Studies

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Once you’re getting good at working with one fash, or mul-

tiple fashes acting as one more powerul light source, you

can start experimenting with more. Adding a second light

source will unlock a new level o possibilities. In this exam-

ple, I used two fashes: one was shot through my LumiQuest

SB III sotbox. It’s only a small modier but it does soten

the light slightly and gives it a richer quality. And given

it was a windy day I didn’t want to use a bigger modier,

anyway. The last thing you want is your light stands learn-

ing to fy and then make an emergency landing on water...

A second, bare fash was added to rim-light the model, a

antastic young dancer. The fash head was zoomed to its

maximum setting to concentrate the light and avoid spill.

Generally, a rim or separation light like this is used

to draw attention to orm (in this case muscle detail)

and make a person stand out rom his background.

I used a high shutter speed o 1/2000 to reeze the water

drops. This meant I was working in high-speed sync

mode, which robs the fashes o a lot o their power.

Fortunately, I was working in the shade at the time. Also,

this picture isn’t lit entirely by fash. There’s still a lot o

ambient in the total exposure as well. The fashes were

just used to bring out the body o the dancer even more.

3 Ten Case Studies

.. Lord o the Glmmerngs: Freezing Water with High-Speed SyncHats o to behind-the-scenes photographer Serge Van Cauwenb

or timing his shot to mine so you can actually see the fashes r

(sergevancauwenbergh.com)

A variation on the same water theme. It’s always important to ask y

models or input and ideas, especially i they’re creative people them

Here, the idea o going into the water was the dancer’s.

3 . 3 .

http://www.sergevancauwenbergh.com/

http://www.sergevancauwenbergh.com/

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In the previous case, we used a very ast shutter speed to reeze action. Sometimes, doing just the opposite will create even more impact.

Nikon D90 | 10-24mm /3.5-4.5G @ 10mm | Ambient exposure /10 @ 1/3s (underexposed by 1 stop) | ISO 200 | O-camera ash at hal power

Flash and Slow Shutter SpeedThe Rickshaw Ride rom He

3 Ten Case Studies

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Very ew times in my lie have I elt the adrenaline

rushing like in this rickshaw ride rom the Indian

city o Tanjore’s magnicent Brihadeeswarar temple

back to the hotel. The apocalyptic ride took only ve

minutes, but it seemed to last orever. Imagine a roll-

ercoaster gone berserk and reusing to stop. The driver

was a woman, which is rare enough in itsel, but she

drove with the testosterone o a thousand men.

I wanted to capture the renzy o this ride. I chose a

slowish shutter speed o 1/3 o a second, which would

make the outside world like a blur, very much like how

it elt. Exposing or the outside let the interior o the

rickshaw ar too dark, and this is where the fash came in.

I handheld it and red a couple o pops at dierent power

settings, chimping at the LCD i adjustments were needed

and also trying not to let the fash slip rom my hand as

the rickshaw bumped its way through the potholed road.

I settled or hal power on the fash. The short burst o

fash in this long exposure not only lightened up the in-

terior, but also helped to reeze our renetic rickshaw lady.

Oh, by the way, i you want to impress your

riends with some FTT (fash tech talk): this

technique o combining fash with a longer ex-

posure is called “dragging the shutter.”

In post-production, I lightened the rickshaw

roo a little more to reveal some more o the pat-

tern detail. I also applied some Lightroom Clar-

ity to the streaks o light surrounding this rocket-

propelled death con to give them more pop.

You can see me in the let rear-view mirror. I could

have taken it out in Photoshop but I decided to

let mysel play a small cameo role in this Bolly-

wood remake o The Fast and the Furious.

e Case Stud es

.. Flash and Slow Shutter Speed: The Rickshaw Ride rom Hell

Use your fash and your camerasettings to help convey to your

viewer the emotions you elt while you were at the scene.

I you add a tripod

setup, you can com

even longer shutte

with fash, as Crat

Vision author Mich(michaelrye.com)

this image. He com

two fash pops (on

an amber gelled fa

below, one with a b

gelled fash rom a

with an ambient e

o one hour, to rec

star trails. And all

using lm. Hats o

TIP: Unless you’re working in manual, most cameras have a low

(such as 1/60) on the shutter speed when combined with ash. The

to protect you rom making blurry ash exposures... like this one. N

you can override this paternalistic behaviour in the custom settings

camera menu. I have mine set to its maximum o 30 seconds.

TIP: When using ash, you have a choice between Front and Rea

Sync. This deals with the typical trails o movement that appear whsharp (ashed) subject is mixed with motion blur rom a longer am

exposure. Unless you want your subject to appear to be moving bac

always choose Rear Curtain Sync.

3 . 4 .

http://www.michaelfrye.com/

http://www.michaelfrye.com/

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


Nikon D700 | VR 70-200mm /2.8G | 70mm | /18 @ 1/640s | ISO 400 | 3 SB-900s in a Westcott Apollo 28-

Turn Three Flashes nto One:

You Cannot Turn OneFlash into Three…

3 Ten Case Studies

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When working in bright, ambient light, especially when

you want to overpower that light to get detail in the sky

and you want to bring up the resulting dark oreground

with fash, you’ll quickly start running into the limita-tions o a one-fash setup. In case 1, two bare fashes

were needed at ull power to lighten up the skater.

I you want to run your fashes through a diuser, such

as a sotbox, you’ll need even more power because the

fashes have to go through that extra layer o diusion.

In these circumstances, the bill can add up quickly

when you’re using the brand fashes. However, since

you’ll probably be working at ull power anyway, you

don’t really need the TTL. In situations like this, a

ull manual fash like the LumoPro LP160 can come

in handy—or the price o one brand fash, you can

get about three LP160s. That means triple the power

or, in fash parlance: one and a hal stops extra. And

that’s a lot to have: it can mean the dierence between

being able to use a sotbox or not. Or aster recycle

times (and thereore longer battery lie). Yongnuo is

another manuacturer o aordable manual fashes.

In this setup, three fashes were used on a Lastolite

TriFlash adapter. Including this bracket and the

Westcott Apollo 28-inch sotbox, this would set you

back about $1800 with brand fashes. With third-party LumoPro fashes, it would be about $750.

Some might argue that even $750 is a lot to pay

or relatively low power, and you’d be better o

buying a heavier studio fash with a portable bat-

tery. But then again, you can turn three fashes into

one more powerul light source. But you cannot

break up one big fash into three! For more on this

topic, see 2.5. Outgrowing Your Small Flashes.

.. Turn Three Flashes nto One: You Cannot Turn One Flash into Three…

3 . 5 .

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Nikon D700 | VR 16-35mm /4G | 19mm | /18 @ 1/250s | ISO 100 | Main Light: 3 SB-900s at ull power in a Westcott Apollo 28-inch sotbox without diuser | Rim light: 1 SB-900 at ull power

Sunset at Noon

3 Ten Case Studies

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I love working with artistic people, such as musicians or

dancers, or personal projects: they’re ocused and always

willing to stretch themselves (no pun intended) to get

just the picture you’re ater. This shot was taken at noonon a sunny day. What looks like the setting sun to the

right is actually a fash on a cloned-out light stand.

The actual sunlight was coming rom behind

camera let. The ambient was underexposed

and the dancers were lit by a sotbox.

This “cross lighting” setup (main light and rim light

on a diagonal line, at an angle towards the camera,

with the subject in between main and rim light) is

an ecient way o adding depth to your subjects.

.. Sunset at Noon

3 . 6 .

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Nikon D700 | 14-24mm /2.8G | 14mm | /10 @ 1/250s | ISO 200 | SB-900 at hal power triggered by the D700’s built-in ash

Usng Flags

3 Ten Case Studies

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.6. Usng FlagsThis picture o a sherman was shot late in the

aternoon on beautiul lake Egirdir, in Turkey. As

you may have noticed by now, I love using wide-

angle lenses or environmental portraits, becausethey really draw the viewer into the scene.

I wanted to show the nice nuances in the sky, so

I made sure my exposure was set or that. This

underexposed my subject but I could bring him

up using fash. Normally, in pictures like these

the oreground that’s out o reach o the fash

tends to go very dark and muddy, but since we

were on a boat the water nicely refects the sky

and there are ar less dark patches in the rame.

Since I knew we had about an hour beore

us, I worked in manual and built the pic-

ture up slowly, deciding on ambient rst

and then adding fash to my liking.

I fagged the fash using a Honl fag because too

much light was hitting the camera let oar, mak-

ing it distractingly bright. I could o course have

darkened it in Photoshop aterwards, but gettingit right in camera was much less o an eort.

We even had time to do a behind-the-scenes shot and

have Ruth and the sherman swap jobs or a second.

Because o the hard light and the angle at which I

handheld the fash, the sherman’s eyes are invis-

ible below the brim o his hat, but that doesn’t

disturb me. Had the eyes been visible, the viewer’s

eyes would be much more attracted to the sher-

man. With the eyes invisible, the picture is more

about the man and his natural surroundings.

P.S. Expressly tilting your horizon like this is

called Dutch Angling. Note to sel: go easier

on the Dutch Angling in the uture!

When you’ve got time to spare,

working all manual will give youmore consistent, predictable, and

repeatable results.

^Ruth is clearly less at ease in her new role as a skipper, whereas the

sherman in no time became a great photographer’s assistant.

3 . 7 .

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.7. Gellng or Eect: Yogyakarta BluesIn case 7 o Volume 1, we talked

about putting a gel on your fash to

make the colour o the fash blend

in with the ambient light, so allthe colours match up nicely.

Sometimes, though, you may want to

do just the opposite or eect. Take

this image. It was shot at dusk.

The sky was turning blue but it wasn’t blue

enough to my taste. Sure, I could have

spiced up the blues a little in post-produc-

tion, using Adobe Lightroom’s or Camera

Raw’s HSL panel (one o my avourite

panels, by the way). But why post-process

when you can get it right in camera?

I put a CTO (colour temperature orange)

gel on the fash. That changed the

daylight-balanced light rom my fash to

incandescent (think o a typical yellow-

ish electrical bulb, hence the symbol on

your camera’s white balance selector).

I set my camera’s white balance to In-

candescent. Doing this told my camera

that it had to correct or that yellowish

light. And how does a camera corrector a certain colour cast? It adds the

opposite colour. Blue, in this case.

This led the already blue sky to be-

come a really mystical blue, which

not only added drama to the scene,

but also contrasted nicely with the

rich yellow and red colours.

I also underexposed the

ambient light by two stops.

Underexposing a sky will

make the colours appear more

saturated. The combination o

the gelled fash and the un-

derexposed background made

or a much more dramatic blue sky than

there actually was. Just don’t tell anyone!

Other than that, the lighting setup

was pretty simple: the gelled fash was

shot through an umbrella attached

to my Gitzo Traveler tripod which

served as a makeshit light stand.

When shooting at dusk like this, you

have to move ast and check your ambi-

ent exposure regularly, because it really

sinks like a stone and the longer you

work, the longer you’ll have to leave

your shutter open to suck in enough

ambient light to prevent the back-

ground rom going completely black.

Want a dramatically blue twilight

sky? Add a CTO to your fash andshoot incandescent white balance.

T̂ime and timing is o the essence when shooti

around sunset. The image to the right was shot

same ambient settings, only 18 minutes earlier

was still too much light around or this eect to

. 8 .

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


NIKON D700 | 24-70mm /2.8G @ 48mm | /9 @ 1/200s | ISO 100 | Let and right Speedlight in umbrella in group A, one Speedlight underneath in group B. Power tweaked manually.

Hgh Key Baby:

The Horizontal Clamshell

3 Ten Case StudiesEven dolls have catchlights!

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.8. Hgh Key Baby: The Horizontal ClamshellClamshell lighting is a popular technique

to bathe people in sot light. It’s great or

upbeat photographs. The technique consists

o putting two umbrellas on one light stand:

one like you would do normally, pointing

down, and another one just below it, with

only a 10 cm gap between the two, pointing

slightly up. Normally, the lower umbrella gets

attached to the light stand with a clamp.

Normally, the fash in the highest umbrella

will be put slightly more powerul than the

lower one (which acts more as a ll light).

You photograph your subject by stick-

ing your lens through the 10 cm gap.

The result is as i you’re shooting through

a giant sotbox: your subject is fooded by

this big sot light source. The

dual catchlights make a nice

side eect. I you add a white

background to this setup,

the results are very fattering,

upbeat, and high-key images.

The only downside when you

want to use the clamshell tech-

nique is that your model… has to

be able to sit or stand up straight.

Which is not the case with the

average six-month-old baby.

So, I translated the concept

to work with babies as well.

An old thick glass rerigerator door was put on

two small chairs (choose thick, hardened saety

glass or, better yet, thick unbreakable Plexiglas

when you do this yoursel and have an assistant

stand by so the baby does not roll o). On top

o that came a diuser (the type that comes with

a 5-in-1 refector). This would serve as the back-

ground. Under this background, I put a fash,

zoomed all the way out to give broad coverage.

To the let and right o this setup I put two

fashes in umbrellas. Contrary to the normal

clamshell setup, here I put both fashes at the

same power, as they would not light the top and

bottom, but the let and right o my subject.

When setting this up and trying this out, you

don’t want to ruin whatever attention span the

baby will allot to you. So I practiced on a doll.

Once the power o the fashes was righ

brought in the model and red away. T

ambient light was completely eliminat

the settings chosen. The whole scene i

with Speedlights. In retrospect, it prob

would have been better to turn the bab

clockwise 45 degrees so the catchlights

be in the top and bottom o the eye in

o let and right. It would look more n

as ar as dual umbrella catchlights ever

Which is another tip by itsel: always r

evaluate your images ater a shoot and

a (mental) note o what works and wh

doesn’t. Pretty soon you’ll have a who

o lighting techniques to pull ideas ro

^A typical clamshell lighting

setup. Just stick your lensthrough the opening in

between the two umbrellas

and sot portrait light

welcomes you!

^Detail o how the lower

fash and umbrella can beattached to the same light

stand using a so-called

Manrotto Justin Clamp.

Two fashes through an umbrella

and right. One fash underneath

glass door, diused by a diusion

Camera red through the two um

Even dolls have catchlights!

3 . 9 .

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


Last One Turns O the Lghts :

Mixing Flash and HDR On location, don’t dwell on what you didn’t bring but make do with what you have. Scarcity is the mother o invention.

Nikon D90 | 10-24mm /3.5-4.5G | 10mm | /11 | ISO 100 | 3 image HDR + o-camera ash

3 Ten Case StudiesISO 200/11 @ 1/125s

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


.9. Last One Turns O the Lghts: Mixing Flash and HDR I’m not a huge an o HDR. At least, not

o the HDR variety that blatantly shouts

in your ace “Look at me, I’m an HDR

picture”... I do appreciate the options

HDR technology brings and I use its

possibilities in what I’d call a less graphi-

cal and more photographical way.

Another thing I’m not ond o with HDR

is what it does to colour. As a result, I end

up converting many o my HDRs to black

and white as shown in more detail in my

Crat & Vision title The Power o Black &

White in Adobe Lightroom & Beyond.

For this beautiul water temple on the

south cost o Bali, Indonesia, I had

a moody, dark image in mind.

To get there, I used a combination o two

techniques. The rst was to use o-camera

fash to light the temple guardian. The

fash was just out o sight to camera let.

Normally, in cases like this, I’d use a light

stand or possibly even a sotbox on a boom

stand over my head. Unortunately, boom

stands and sotboxes don’t t very well in

bicycle panniers. I’d normally use my tripod

as a light stand but I already needed that or

technique number two (the HDR), so I put

the fash on its small plastic oot on a rock,

just outside o the rame on camera let.

While I wanted dark and moody, I also

wanted lots o detail and post-processing

options, so I shot a bracketed series o

three pictures that I knew I could turn

into HDR. I only red my fash during the

last exposure. This made sure the HDR

sotware would not create “ghosts” around

the guardian in case he had not sat com-

pletely still during the three exposures.

I then converted the resulting HDR picture

to black and white in Nik Sotware’s Silver

Eex Pro and boosted the midtone sharp-

ness o the stairs to make them look more

textured. I also lightened them to better

lead the viewer’s eyes rom the guardian

(where the eye enters the rame) right down

the stairs. It’s all about leading the eye!

Without fash (top picture) all the attention

goes to the sky. The temple guardian and

the stairs, two o the key elements in this

picture are hardly noticeable. The stairs

could not be lit, but were easy to bring out

in postproduction. I did light the guardian

with a dash o fash (just out o sight to

camera let) to make him stand out more.

ISO 200/11 @ 1/30s

ISO 200 | /11 @ 1

SB-900 camera leset at hal powe

+ black & white conversio

=

+

+

3 . 1 0 .

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


The Best O-CameraFlash Set:It Is the One YouHave with You

One o my avourite photos o a two-week trip. Taken during a short hike on which I almost hadn’t brought my camera.

Nikon D700 | VR 16-35mm /4G | 19mm | /6.3 @ 1/5s (= TTL light metering, 1 stop underexposed) | ISO 800 | SB-900 shot through umbrella in TTL mode, + 0.3 ash exposure compensation

3 Ten Case Studies

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.0. The Best O-Camera Flash Set: It Is the One You Have with YouAt the end o these case studies, it’s

a good idea to go back to the basics.

Strangely, the more gear we accumulate

as photographers, the less we seem to

want to carry it around. Sometimes, it

even becomes a drag (literally) and it

becomes all too tempting not to take

it with us when we go or a stroll…

And o course, it’s then when the

magic photo opportunities happen!

I’m writing this one down as much

or mysel as I am doing it or you.

Because I too need constant remind-

ing to take my gear with me. With-

out a camera, no photographs.

This photo was shot during a Lumen

Dei workshop in the mountain village o

Lamayuru. We had already walked up a

couple o hundred extra eet to the village

monastery and had almost returned to the

guesthouse, when I suddenly couldn’t ndmy hat anymore. I thought I had orgotten

it at the monastery, which meant climbing

back up again. At 10,000 eet, you think

twice beore doing so. The others kindly

oered to take my gear back to the guest-

house while I returned looking or my hat.

I was tempted… ater all, I’d already done

the trip once with the camera, right? But

then I decided I’d take it with me anyway.

Back at the temple, I ound the hat...

at the bottom o my camera bag. It’d

been with me all the time! I was quite

displeased with what I thought o as

an unnecessary hike up again and

started my descent to the guesthouse.

And then I stumbled upon this amily.

The lighting itsel is really simple, as it o-

ten is. When magical moments like these

spontaneously happen, there’s no time (orneed) to get into a three-light setup! I just

used one fash and my Westcott collapsible

reversible umbrella that’s always strapped

to my ThinkTank Speed Racer, ready to be

put in the hands o a villager passing by.

I love the sot light because it correctly

portrays these wonderul people and

it puts a nice catchlight in their eyes,

which helps to make the picture.

Small note: i you look closely, you’ll

see the baby holding a sheet o paper.

That’s actually a small print rom my

equally indispensable Polaroid Pogo

printer (see 2.4.5. or more ino on that).

Always carry (some o)your gear with you. ^

The only thing that I regret in this picture is that th

has little detail. It isn’t pure white, so technically, it

burned out. It just lacks some detail. There just wa

any that evening. That’s why I’ve also got a version

a border around it. The border does a good job o k

your eye “in the rame.”

B o n u

s !

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


Bonus Case: This One Goes to Eleven

3 Ten Case Studies

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


.. Bonus Case: This One Goes to Eleven.As mentioned beore, the ability to use high-

speed sync is one o the main reasons why

some photographers preer to use (lots o)

small Speedlights rather than bigger, more

powerul studio strobes. In some cases, the

need or a ast shutter speed, and thereore

high-speed sync, is merely the by-product o

wanting to use a wide aperture. In a pinch,

you could also achieve this with a fash or

triggers that are not capable o high-speed

sync—just use a neutral density lter that

makes the shutter speed drop below your

sync speed. I sometimes use a variable neutral

density lter to that eect (see 2.4.4).4 But

what i you want to reeze motion, or both?

In these cases high-speed sync really shines.

This image o impromptu model

Myrthe illustrates this well, taken at

noon on an overcast but sunny day.

Correctly exposing or Myrthe makes the sky

blow out completely. Exposing or detail in

the sky on the other hand, makes Myrthe

much too dark. And rom the looks on

her ace, she doesn’t like that one bit! The

exposure is 1/8000 o a second (the limit

o my camera) at ISO 100 and /1.4. So I

need to add fash to correctly light her and

maintain detail in the sky. 1/8000 at /1.4 is

equivalent to 1/250 at /8 (see table below).

/8000 at /.4 = /4000 at /2.0 = /2000 at /2.8 = /000 at 4 = /500 at /5.6 = /250 at /8

^

All these combinations will result in the same amount o light hitting your sensor. So, your histogram will look the same, but yourpicture won’t—the aesthetics will vary greatly. Choosing -stop and shutter speed combinations is one o the key choices you make

as a photographer.

^Exposing to get detail in the sky and not using a fash leaves Myrthe’s ace underex

The disapproving look on her ace told me it was time to shine some fashlight on h

4 Focusing through a neutral density

sometimes be dicult. I you have a

lter, it might help to ocus with the

its minimal setting, switch to manu

turn the lter to its desired strength

make the picture.

3 Ten Case Studies

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


.. Bonus Case: This One Goes to Eleven – contnued

I I don’t have high-speed sync, and I don’t

have an ND lter, then I’d have to work

at /8 and 1/250. But what i I don’t want

to work at /8? What i I want to use my

ancy /1.4 lens wide open? A ve-stop

ND lter would give me /1.4 at 1/250 o a

second, still allowing me to trigger my fash

“conventionally.” But what i I also want to

reeze the motion o the fying hair? Then

1/250 won’t cut it. Enter high-speed sync.

At 1/8000 o a second, ISO 100, this is an

extreme example o high-speed sync re-

ally stretching the system. High-speed sync

reduces the eective output o your fash, so

in extreme situations like this, where we’re

overpowering the sunlight by a couple o

stops, one fash won’t be enough, especially i

you’re using a diuser like a sotbox, which is

also known to eat fash power or breakast.

This image was lit with the FourSquare—it’s

a combination o a sotbox that can be disas-

sembled or transport and a piece o highly

engineered aluminum that accommodates

up to our fashes, so our times the power

(or in -stops: two -stops more) than one

fash will give you (see 2.4.2. or more ino).

The sotbox was handheld at about one

meter rom Myrthe by her ather,

ellow photographer Jürgen.

The most dicult part was the trigger-

ing. Since we were working in high-speed

sync, ordinary radio triggers would not

work. So I thought through the options:

1) The PocketWizard ControlTL system

was an option, but an expensive one: I’d

have needed one receiver or every fash

plus a trigger on my camera. That’s a

total o $1,100 in triggers only. Ouch!5

2) I could have used Nikon’s optical triggering

system, triggering the our fashes in the Four-

Square sotbox as remotes with the built-in

fash o my D700, but in bright ambient con-

ditions the reliability o this setup isn’t 100%.

3) A slightly better way would be to use a

th SB-900 as a commander on my cam-

era, as I can direct that control signal a lot

better by swivelling the fash’s head. But

I “only” have our o them, and they’re

already in the FourSquare sotbox.

4) The solution came in the orm o a good

old SC-28 sync cord: I hooked it up to my

camera and hooked up the other end to

one o the our SB-900s that I set up as a

commander. The other three were set up as

remotes. I programmed the commander to

re in ull manual (high-speed sync) power,

as I knew the problem would not be having

too much power, but rather too little, even

with the our fashes. The commander being

so close to the remotes, they had no trouble

receiving the commander trigger signal.

By the way: i you’re a Canon user:

using a Canon sync cable, you

could do the same thing!

5 Apparently, RadioPopper triggers, c

with optional Fiber Optic Bundles b

Bass Designs, can allow you to re u

remote fashes (i they’re close enou

one trigger.

For more ino on this, check out Dav

website daveblackphotography.com

check the November 2010 entry in t

“Workshop at the Ranch” section.

4 Four Intervews



7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


We’ve saved what’s probably the best part o this eBook orlast. In the ollowing pages, you’ll nd the results o ourinterviews I had with ellow Belgian photographers that makerequent use o o-camera fash. We discuss inspiration, business, creativity and technique. I hope you’ll nd these

interviews as interesting and rereshing as I did.

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


4 Four Interviews

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


.. Andy Van den Eynde: All6 Is Fair in Love and War

My eyes were immediately drawn

to this picture when Andy was

fipping through his iPad port-

olio. It’s ull o drama and has a

highly cinematographic eel to it:

I wasn’t surprised to learn later

on that Andy has a background

in the broadcasting industry.

As you can see rom the setup

shot, the drama was achieved

by a combination o actors: the

low and close vantage point, the

wide angle lens, and o course

the use o o-camera fash.

Lie in the trenches, AD 2009

I guess they wouldn’t use th

fuorescent jackets in a real w

6Including the use o o-camera fa

How does a thirty-something photographer end up with a colour image o a World War II battle scene that seems shot as i was right there and yet has a very contemporary eel to it? The answer is that this picture wasn’t made 70 years ago, more l70 weeks ago. Belgian Photographer Andy Van den Eynde (only related to the author o this eBook by his love or photograph

shot this as part o a personal project documenting re-enactments o historical battles. The scene o the action isn’t OmahaBeach, but an exercise lot or people that learn to operate bulldozers and digging machines. The trench was “dug to order” alet or a couple o months to become overgrown. Time o capture was October, where there’s more chance o having the drakind o cloudy sky this type o picture yearns or. Oh yes, when people are this serious about their hobby, as a photographershould be equally serious when portraying them.

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


4 Four Interviews

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


.. Andy Van den Eynde: All Is Fair in Love and War – contnued

When orced to pick a minimal light-

ing and lens kit, Andy would go with

his Sigma 50mm 1.4, a Sunbounce

Mini refector and a Speedlight.

Andy’s personal projects are not only vital

or experimenting and unleashing creativ-

ity, they also land Andy new jobs.

This is a common reaction I

heard rom the other interview-

ees as well: regular personal

work is the key to growing both

your crat and your business.

Speaking o business, Andy

shoots commercial jobs as well

as portraits and weddings.

For the latter, he doesn’t shy

away rom using a fash or two

(or three, or our) either.

He has a great technique to share

or getting better shots o what

is dreaded by many a wedding photographer:

the opening dance. He’ll place three fashes

in a triangular way across the room. Flash

volumes are preset and they are all triggered

simultaneously. This setup is not only handy

or capturing the obligatory speeches, but also

especially useul later in the evening. Andy

has the wedding couple ask the DJ to go easy

on the lights and colour eects during the

opening dance and so he manages to get great

shots without annoying colour casts or sudden

over- or underexposure. Regardless o where

the couple is on the dance foor and o where

he is in relation to them, there’s always some

amount o rontal ll and rim light coming

rom the fash triangle, giving him well-lit

and three-dimensional shots. All he has to do

to get the rim light is make sure the couple is

between him and one o the three fashes.

Placing the fashes at the back o the room

with a relatively wide setting on the zoom

head (24 mm) also lightens up the room

and gives some depth to the audience, wh

would otherwise be lost in the shadows.

Although more and more digital photog-

raphers are resorting to their LCD as a

post-actum light meter, Andy swears by

a real fash light meter—another thing he

takes rom his background working with

analog lm. Much like working with slide

lm, there wasn’t much margin or error a

chimping was a term used only in zoos.

8With the new PocketWizard system

even change power settings remote

the fashes to three dierent groups

allow you to re them individually,

two, or all together.

9A Dutch painter rom the seventee

ater whom the “Rembrandt light” i

photography was named.

^Andy will oten set up three fashes during a wedding banquet. This gives

him both rontal ll light and rim light rom whatever direction he decidesto shoot the couple when they set o or the opening dance.

4 Four Interviews

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


.. Andy Van den Eynde: All Is Fair in Love and War – contnued

Andy still recalls assignments rom his

studies where students had to photo-

graphically rebuild a scene rom say, a

Rembrandt painting, using a light meter.

Even now, studying other photographers’

work and trying to reverse engineer it

is an important part o improving as

a photographer. Not to slavishly copy,

but to eclectically use elements you like

and mix them into your own style.

While Andy reads the occasional book

and photo mag and ollows the odd

workshop, either live or online, he eels

that ultimately the best way to progress

as a photographer is to practice, learn

rom your mistakes, and build your own

little lighting library in your mind.

Finally, Andy also shares a couple o tips on

the business side o things: or commercial

shoots, he’ll oten split up his invoice into

sections or “labour” and “gear,” assign-

ing some amount o the total bill

to the use (and depreciation) o

his gear. This helps to show his

clients that not every penny he

invoices is pure prot and that a

part o what he makes goes into keeping

up with technology (and client’s demands).

Again, something infuenced by the

practices o the broadcasting industry.

Also, Andy does not believe in paying or

advertising. Your portolio should be your

own advertising campaign and i you treat

your clients, their riends, and their amilies

well during a job, they’ll become your own

account executives. This will be easier to

achieve i you have a personal style you’re

comortable with. People won’t discuss mon-

ey i they’ve chosen you or your style. They

will i they’ve chosen you based on price.

When asked i there’s any new personal

projects he’s contemplating, Andy talks about

a DVD by Joey Lawrence he’s just watched

(Faces o a Vanishing World) and says:

“Maybe something in that style. Obviously

not the same, but I like the idea o one day

visiting oreign cultures, getting great shots

o them, and doing something in return.”

Oddly enough, as Andy talked to me about

this, I had the same DVD sitting in my

laptop. I was halway through it and had

had similar ideas. Apparently, in addition to

sharing the same amily name, we also share

some o the same idols, ideas, and ideals.

Measuring your light is knowing it.

Andy Van den E

Andy’s website:

andyvandeneynde.be

Twitter: @andyvde

Sites that Andy visit

creatvelve.com

hoerphotography.com

mkelarson.com

joeyl.com

4 . 2 .

Tom Museeuw:Wanted: The Perect Fill Flas

http://www.andyvandeneynde.be/

http://www.creativelive.com/

http://www.hofferphotography.com/

http://www.mikelarson.com/

http://www.joeyl.com/

http://www.joeyl.com/

http://www.mikelarson.com/

http://www.hofferphotography.com/


http://www.andyvandeneynde.be/

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


Wanted: The Perect Fill Flas

NIKON D700 | 24-70mm /2.8 | ISO200 | 24mm | /2.8 @ 1/2000s | Two Speedlights triggered in high-speed sync via Nikon CLS | ND flter

4 Four Interviews

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


.. Tom Museeuw: Wanted: The Perect Fill Flash

By almost accidentally photographing a

young model in one o those grungy set-

tings in 2007, he started experimenting with

model photography. In 2008, Tom decided to

explore a commercial career in photography

on top o his daytime job as a youth counsel-

lor. The skills he draws rom this job come

in handy when photographing teen models,

which to Tom is “70% about the subject,

30% about the camera.” In three years’ time,

his signature lighting and post-processing

style has landed him more clients than

many ulltime photographers can dream o.

Consistency and workfow eciency in his

commercial work, ed by experimentation in

his personal work, is the key to his success.

A big part o Tom’s commercial work is

photographing children’s and teen’s ash-ion. His clients almost always choose the

location in which the collections have to

be photographed. And while they’re very

knowledgeable about ashion, they’re less so

about light in general and photographically

pleasing light in particular. So Tom oten nds

himsel aced with “bad” ambient light. In

these conditions, he’ll oten use Caliornia

Sunbounce refectors, which he sees as a way

o literally bouncing less-than-ideal ambi-

ent light into better quality light. To him, a

refector is like a snooker cue and light is the

snooker ball: the cue is just a tool to get the

ball where you want it, using the basic physi-

cal laws o bouncing to your advantage.

I that still doesn’t give him the look he’s

ater, Tom will add fash light. His lighting

bag consists o our SB-900s and an Elinchrom

Ranger Quadra kit. As modiers he uses the

same collapsible reversible Westcott umbrellawe discussed in Volume 1. He also uses the

Westcott 28-inch sotbox. On his wish list

is a gigantic 86-inch parabolic umbrella

with bre rods instead o the more ragile

metal ones and a ull-time assistant to pre-

vent the thing rom taking o mid-shoot.

His Speedlights are triggered with either

Nikon’s CLS system or the new PocketWizard

ControlTL system. When he needs more

power than one Speedlight can deliver, he

attaches two o them to a Lovegrove Gemini

fash bracket. This was also the lighting setup

that was used in the opening picture. The

two fash heads were zoomed all the way

out and had the wide angle adapters on

to give a very wide spread o light.

Tom used the wide end and the largest aper-

ture o his 24-70mm /2.8 zoom. He wanted

to underexpose the background to make theclouds darker and more looming. Yet, at the

same time he wanted the depth o eld to be

as shallow as his lens allowed him to, giv

the almost surreal out-o-ocus quality to

clouds. This necessitated a shutter speed

was aster than the maximum shutter sp

o his camera. Tom used a variable neutr

density lter rom Light Crat Workshop

2.4.4) to bring the shutter speed “down”

1/2000 o a second. Tom knew he could

fash even at this speed using high-speed

but to make up or the power loss high-s

sync causes, he had to add an extra fash

This was o course a dedicated personal

shoot, but even during the (rare) slow m

ments o a commercial shoot, Tom will o

experiment with new setups or ideas. On

o that, he’ll have the occasional last-mi

“‘Guerrilla reestyle shoot,” where he ru

up a model and an assistant on Facebooor Twitter to try out new creative ideas.

When Tom sent me a couple o images to prepare or our interview, the rst one to catch my eye was this picture o his sonLennert. Although it’s obviously a personal picture, it oozes the same proessional quality o Tom’s commercial work. Tom tup photography in 2005 as a hobby and was very much into the urban exploring scene, photographing abandoned places.

4 Four Interviews

d h ill l h The light quality was all but fattering in this

In Search o the Perect Fll Flash

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


.. Tom Museeuw: Wanted: The Perect Fill Flash

While his personal work is clearly more obviously fash-lit than his commercial work,

successul experiments tend to trickle down rom the ormer to the latter.

Tom looks at light as a continuum rom ambient to fash. In his commercial work, he

searches or the perect balance between fash and natural light. This not only brings out

the detail in the clothes as realistically and pleasingly as possible, it also makes the subse-

quent colour correction easier. The inset “In Search o the Perect Fill Flash” shows this.

In his personal work, reed rom these constraints, he can

use more dramatic fash-to-ambient ratios.

When photographing children and teens, make sure you

know what drives them and what their world o interest is.

100%ambient

100%ash

‘perect fll

ash’

The light quality was all but fattering in this

available light shot. Lowering the shutter spe

wasn’t advisable, nor did Tom want to increas

ISO. And even had he done so, it would only h

brightened the entire image, washing out

the windows.

ISO 200 | 50 mm | /2.8 @ 1/60s | Ambient only

In order to change both the quality and the

quantity o light, Tom set up a Speedlight wit

an umbrella outside. This remote Speedlight

triggered by another Speedlight on the came

set to commander. The image is now obvious

fash-lit, and even too much so.

ISO 200 | 50mm | /2.8 @ 1/60s

TTL o-camera ash at +2 EV

Tom likes to work in manual or aperture prio

his ambient light settings. For his fash settin

is a big believer in working with iTTL and usi

exposure compensation. Here, he took his or

fash exposure compensation o +2 EV down

EV. The result is the harmonious, perectly baresh-looking image he’s come to be known

ISO 200 | 50mm | /2.8 @ 1/60s

TTL o-camera ash at -1 EV

4 Four Interviews

T M W t d Th P t Fill Fl h t d

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


.. Tom Museeuw: Wanted: The Perect Fill Flash – contnued

The dierence in Tom’s approach to personal

versus commercial work can also be seen in

his post-processing, especially when shooting

clothing: or commercial work, getting the col-

ours o the clothes right is o the utmost impor-

tance. Tom uses a ColorChecker Passport rom

X-Rite at the start o the shoot and then uses X-

Rite’s Lightroom plug-in to make a custom pro-

le. The advantage o the ColorChecker prole

compared to the Adobe or camera-specic pro-

les is that the ColorChecker is all about main-

taining relative colour accuracy among colours.

Tom’s post-processing workfow is highly

streamlined: he uses a series o custom Light-

room presets that are lighting-specic. There’s

one preset or when he uses fash, another or

when he’s used a silver Caliornia Sunbounce,

yet another or when he’s used a golden one.

Photoshop is mainly used or sharpening.

For personal work, such

as the interview’s opening

picture, he allows himsel

more leeway: a vignette

was added, colours were

selectively tweaked us-

ing Lightroom’s HSL

panel and a healthy

dose o the Clarity slider

was added to the gritty

industrial environment

in the oreground.

Tom has a well-read

blog and also gives light-

ing workshops in Belgium

and abroad. For his own technical inspira-

tion, he turns to sites such as Fstoppers and

creativeLIVE. Recently, he also came across the

photography o Je Newsom, whose creative

wedding photography incorporates techniques

such as tilt-shit lenses and light painting.

Speaking o creativity, Tom already has a

plan or a new personal project that—unlike

his guerrilla style last-minute fings—will

require more planning. He only reveals that

it “will have something to do with danc-ers.” Coming soon to a blog post near you.

When you shoot in a consistent way, your post-processing canalso be done in a quick and consistent way.

Tom Museeuw

Tom’s website: otoolo.be

Twitter: @otoolio

Tom’s workshops

& English blog:

createthatlght.com

Websites Tom visits

stoppers.com

creatvelve.com

jenewsom.com

ISO400 | 50mm | /2.8 @ 1/125s | 1 Speedlight through Westcott umbrella

4 . 3 .

Jürgen Doom: Traveling Ligh

http://www.fotofolio.be/

http://www.createthatlight.com/

http://www.fstoppers.com/


http://www.jeffnewsom.com/

http://www.jeffnewsom.com/


http://www.fstoppers.com/

http://www.createthatlight.com/

http://www.fotofolio.be/

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


NIKON D3x | 24-70mm /2.8 @ 24 mm | ISO 200 | /2.10 @ 1/250s | 2 Remote SB-900s triggered by a third on-camera SB-900, unctioning as a commander.

4 Four Interviews

: Jürgen Doom: Traveling Light

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


.. : Jürgen Doom: Traveling Light

He laughs when I call him the “eco-photog-

rapher.” In act, working like that isn’t only

ecological, it’s also economical and ecient.

Ecient because he avoids trac jams and

economical because it allows him to work on

the way to and rom a shoot. Most o the time,

by the time Jürgen arrives home rom a shoot

by train, his pictures are already imported

into Lightroom, reviewed, and rated. He

might even have done some editing already.

Around the turn o the millennium, Jürgen,

who graduated as an engineer, ollowed his

wie to South Arica on her postgraduate schol-

arship. Ater a trip to the breathtaking Kalahari

desert, he decided to make the switch rom am-

ateur to “pro.” He studied photography in Cape

Town and did a couple o internships with local

photographers, one o whom was Alain Proust,a photographer originally rom France. Alain

did incredible things with the abundant South

Arican sunlight, combining techniques such

as light painting with refectors and scrims.

During an internship at a newspaper, Jürgen,

who was still shooting lm, also discovered the

wonders o bounced fash and o-camera fash

triggered by a TTL cord. He’s still thankul or

the act that the newspaper let him “waste”

a couple o lm rolls. The use o a TTL cord

meant he could trigger his fash remotely and

TTL proved to be a real blessing in the ast-

paced newspaper assignment world, especially

without the luxury o an LCD screen to chimp

at. This experience with fash would serve him

well upon his return to Belgium in 2004, where

sunlight isn’t as quintessential as it is in Arica.

In 2003, Jürgen bought his rst DSLR, a NikonD100. That digital dinosaur is now collecting

dust on his shelves and has made way or a

Nikon D3s and a D3x, depending on what

the job calls or. Jürgen preers to use prime

lenses and triggers his Speedlights with the

PocketWizard MiniTT1 & FlexTT5 system.

Ater a period o being a generalist, which

he nds necessary to nd your true voca-

tion as a photographer, Jürgen nds himsel

gravitating more and more towards corporate

photography: shooting portraiture, report-

age, and architecture or business clients.

For Jürgen, his small fash kit is “as essential

as his lens and camera body.” It allows him to

completely control the light, mood, and con-

trast o a scene. The interior shot on the next

page o a typical teen’s holiday camp dormitory

is a nice example. What appears to be a roomlit with warm, late aternoon ambient sunlight

creeping in was in act mainly lit by fash

“There was sun alright, that day,” Jürgen

calls. “The only problem was it was on th

er side o the building.” Since waiting o

real sun to shine through the window o

rst-foor room was not an option, Jürgen

an assistant outside hold an SB-900 with

gel high up on a light stand and re it th

the window. Another SB-900 in the room

opened up the shadows to camera let a l

When I met Jürgen or this interview, he showed up the same way he shows up or many o his commercial shoots:cycling on a oldable bike that he can take on board a train as carry-on luggage.All o his photo gear and his laptop were tucked into one photo backpack.

4 Four Interviews

: Jürgen Doom: Traveling Light – contnued The setting sun in this picture was

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


.. : Jürgen Doom: Traveling Light – contnued

Working with colour gels has become a signature treat

in Jürgen’s work and it is proo o his client-oriented

thinking. On a recent interior shoot assignment,

Jürgen used dierent colour gels on the background

fashes. “It’s a small eort to do, and it provides the

layouter with a whole extra range o opportuni-

ties. Dierent colours convey dierent moods.”

Another nice example o how his “guerrilla backpack

fash kit” allows him to completely control his light is

the picture o the young gymnast on the balance beam.

Jürgen completely eliminated the ugly greenish light and

the typical sports arena clutter by setting his exposure in

such a way that he completely eliminated the ambient

light, and then rebuilt the light to his liking with fash.

Two bare Speedlights were set up to the let and right

o the girl, accentuating her gure. A fash in a Lastolite

Ezybox provided some rontal ll, making her ace legible.

g p

a Speedlight with a CTO gel. One SB

a light stand, held up high by an ass

mimics the setting sun. Another ge

900, up in a bunk bed behind the ca

provides some ll light in the room

evens out the exposure.Nikon D3S | 24mm /2.8D | /9 @ 1/250

ISO 200 | 2 Speedlights triggered by

PocketWizard Plus IIs

When conronted with this cluttere

environment and all-but-pleasing li

Jürgen simply decided to eliminate

basically turning the gym into a stu

The shutter speed, ISO, and apertur

chosen to eliminate any ambient lig

then the image was lit by three fas

Nikon D3S | 85mm /1.4D | /5.6 @ 1/25

200 | Let and right ashes: SB-900s at

power. Frontal fll ash: SB-900 in a so

quarter power. Triggered with Nikon CL

ourth SB-900 acting as commander.

Once you’ve nailed the overall

setting and exposure, simply

putting dierent gels on yourbackground lights can give layout

people some more fexibility.

4 Four Interviews

: Jürgen Doom: Traveling Light – contnued

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


.. : Jürgen Doom: Traveling Light – contnued

A similar setup was used in the athlete’s picture to the right, only the lights were at a 45-degree

angle behind and no rontal ll was used. Just because you have a multi-light setup in place

does not mean you have to use all your lights all o the time. In act, you can sometimes achieve

more interesting and certainly more dramatic results when switching o the main light.

Now that he has the instant eedback o the camera LCD, Jürgen works mostly in

manual mode, or setting both the fash as well as the ambient exposure.

The same manual method was used or the

opening picture to this interview: the ambient

exposure was underexposed by about one stop

to give the clouds more detail and saturation.

Two Speedlights were added, crosslighting the

runner’s leg. The crosslight nicely denes the

muscles. The hardest thing was to precisely

time the shot and the leg placement. Working

in manual ensured consistency in exposure

throughout the dierent tries. The shutter

speed was 1/250, the limit o the PocketWizards

Plus IIs he was using back then. While the short

burst o the fash roze the runner’s leg, there’s

still a slight blur around the edges o the leg,

caused by the—in action terms—slowish shutter

speed limit o 1/250. This is not really a prob-

lem, on the contrary—everything needn’t be

tack sharp i you want to convey motion. Even

when your gear allows you to use aster shutter

speeds, you should still decide creatively i you

want to reeze the motion completely or not.

Jürgen recognizes the importance o dedi-

cated personal work, but time constraints

oten get in the way. That’s why he’ll oten

experiment with new lighting ideas towards

the end o a commercial shoot. I there’s time

let, and the shots Jürgen was hired to do are

already in the bag, he’ll propose to his clients

and models to try some dierent or new

techniques or ideas. Oten these are the ones

that wind up being used in the campaign.

Jürgen Doom

JÜrgen’s website:

jurgendoom.be

Twitter: @jurgendoom

Websites JÜrgen vis

alanproust.com

nelvn.com/tangents

(A hghly nterestng ste by wed

portrat photographer Nel Van N

3

2

1

^Lighting diagram or the opening image

o this interview.

4 . 4 .

Bert Stephan: Motivational Ligh

http://www.jurgendoom.be/

http://www.alainproust.com/

http://www.neilvn.com/tangents/

http://www.neilvn.com/tangents/

http://www.alainproust.com/

http://www.jurgendoom.be/

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4 Four Interviews

.. Bert Stephan: Motivational Light

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.. Bert Stephan: Motivational Light

Although he’s been into photography or only seven

years, only ve working proessionally, Bert has

built an international reputation as a photographer

and a teacher, and a huge social media ollowing

that many longer-term photographers can only

wish or: over 3,000 Twitter ollowers and over a

quarter million YouTube views o his “Conessions

o a Photographer” behind-the-scenes videos.

He was one o the rst Belgian photographers to

acknowledge the power o social media. When I

ask him how he pulls everything o time wise,

he tells me he mostly manages his social media

during otherwise unproductive moments: when

waiting or a shoot because he arrived early,

when stuck in a trac jam, waiting at the den-

tist, or standing in line at the supermarket.

When the whole idea o o-camera fash (or “strobism,” as it iscalled, named ater David Hobby’s blog strobst.com ) reached Europe,Bert was one o the rst to recognize this was more than just a

passing ad. O-camera fash is here and it looks like it’s here tostay. With his “Conessions o a Photographer” blog and behind-the-scenes videos on YouTube, Bert not only illustrated the potentialo using small fashes on location but also the importance o socialmedia as a marketing medium or his photography, workshops, andhis training DVD Motivational Light.

Bedazzled by the gear section in chapter 2? Then this image is or you: it’s made with what Bert

calls his “€70 ($100) studio”. A shower curtain diuses the light o two continuous light sources: two

350 watt halogen torches (the kind you get rom Home Depot). And while you’re there, shop around

or a carpet that’s normally used by movers—it makes or a great background, as it did here. When

working with powerul continuous light sources like these, always beware o saety, though—these

things get hot and any diuser that’s placed too close could easily melt or… catch re!

4 Four Interviews

.. Bert Stephan: Motivational Light – contnued

http://www.strobist.com/

http://www.strobist.com/

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p gAlthough Bert has a number o Canon Speed-

lites, studio lights, and a portable Elinchrom

Ranger Quadra, he guesses that he could

probably do 95% o his shoots to his client’s

content with only one Speedlite, a set o

triggers, and a shoot-through umbrella. More

(expensive) gear doesn’t necessarily translate

into better picture quality. It’s one o his

mantras during his workshops and “Cones-

sions o a Photographer” YouTube videos, in

which you can oten nd him ring a Speed-

lite through a translucent $10 shower curtain

gaer-taped to a door opening, turning it

into an instant 20 square oot sotbox. Or,he’ll use the headlights o a car as rim lights,

as he shows in his Motivational Light DVD.

Unortunately, sometimes, as a photogra-

pher, you have to “dress to impress,” which

means hauling more gear to a set than you

need, just to look more proessional.

Bert acknowledges the importance o ex-

perimentation, but unlike doing “anything

goes” or individual personal work, he preers

to team up with other creative people and

work on a project that has all the charac-

teristics o a commercial shoot (including

a brieng), only without the budget.

That is the story behind the opening picture

to this interview. Being an accomplished

diver, Bert had been wanting to do some-

thing with underwater photography or a

long time. He wanted to portray the sense

o reedom, the sensation you get when you

dive into a sea or a lake in a magical-realistic

way. A local jewel designer with a need but

no budget or killer shots arranged or the

jewels, the models, and other logistics such

as the catering and the swimming pool. A

couple o Facebook riends chimed in or

logistic support. The results have the look

and eel o a commercial shoot, but ironi-

cally, i this had been a commercial shoot,

charged at commercial rates, the budget

would easily have exceeded $20,000, so the

pictures would never have been made. Now,

thanks to the joint eorts o dierent creative

people, the shoot is a act. The jewel designer

has advertising grade pictures, the assistants

walked away with their heads ull o resh

knowledge, and Bert now has a set o port-

olio images, the raw material or the rst in

an upcoming set o training videos, and the

knowhow to do this type o shoot again with

bigger commercial clients that do have thebudget. It’s a situation where everyone wins.

I you want to read more about this kind o

creative interaction and what it can do or

your photography business, check out Corwin

Hiebert’s Your Creative Mix on Crat & Vision.

Setup shot o the opening image. Bert is underwater o course, the man in the picture is shooting the B

Gear and technique used in the opening picture: Olympus E-PL1 in an Olympus PT-EP01 underwater housing | 14-42mm kit lens @ 14

200 | /9 @ 1/160s | Above the surace, an Elinchrom Ranger Quadra with a standard reector at about hal power gives the eect o th

Under water, a INON Z-240 ash lights the model’s let side. With the settings used, there was no ambient light: everything you see

4 Four Interviews


7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


p gTechnically, there were quite a ew

hurdles to cross: the ar wall o the

pool was covered with black cloth.

Bert shot this with an Olympus Pen,

as the underwater housings or this

camera are relatively aordable.

The light on the right is a fash in

an underwater housing, set to slave

mode. The sunburst in the water on

the let is actually a Ranger Quadra.

The small aperture o /20 on the

Pen causes the starburst. To trigger

the Quadra, Bert came up with a

antastic idea: as his underwater

housing could not accommodate a

PocketWizard, he attached a bre-

glass cable to the housing in ront

o the built-in fash o the Pen. The

other end o the cable was tted to

a driting and waterproo OtterBox

and aimed at a slave cell, which was

in turn connected to a PocketWiz-

ard that triggered the Quadra.

In the last ew years, Bert has seen

the industry change dramatically

and as a photographer, you have

a choice between adapting to that

changed environment or being

overtaken by it. He gives the exam-

ple o a proessional photographer

who makes all the pictures or the

name badges o the employees o a

local company. No doubt, sooner

or later, the company will just buy

a camera and have the HR depart-

ment take the pictures. The pro then

has two choices: either whine about

this sad evolution where “everyone

and his dog have become a photog-

rapher” or be proactive and oer

his services to train the HR depart-

ment in making those pictures look

their best and maybe even start to

oer his training services to other

companies with similar needs.

^Shot during a workshop in Dubai. This picture oozes a cinematographic atmosphere that clearly rev

background in this business. The idea was to contrast the glamorous models with an environment you

to see in the average Dubai promotional lm—these streets are where the immigrant workers live. In

shots, Bert had assistants rufe up the dust on the street: it’s an old cinema trick to spread light—lig

the dust gets refected.

Gear & technique: Canon 5D Mk II | 70-200mm 2.8L IS @ 200mm | ISO 50 | /4 @ 1/160s | Two 580 EX II ashes at

act as rim light. One 580 EX II at hal power provides rontal fll light. Triggered by PocketWizard Plus II

4 Four Interviews


7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


p g

Bert is a rm believer in working manu-

ally, with both his ambient and his fash

settings. This allows him to x one

image in Lightroom and then sync

the others with the same settings.

When asked which other photographers’

work he admires, Bert points at two: Jean-

loup Sie, who used one fash and who

managed to give a visual continuity to

images o completely dierent subjects

in completely dierent surroundings.

The second is Sara Lee, a young American

emale photographer. In her unconventional

pictures o surers, Bert nds the same ree-

dom he likes to put in his own pictures.

From using shower curtains to photographing

jewels in a swimming pool to appreciating

surer’s pictures—water seems to be a theme

in Bert’s work, and it will be or some time to

come. For an upcoming “real” personal pro-

ject, he wants to do “something with people

that have a special bond with... water.”

To be continued!

When your business environment

moves outside the box, your strategicthinking has to ollow.

Bert Stephan

Bert’s website:

bertstephan.com

Twitter: @bertstephani

Bert’s “Conessions

Photographer” BTS von YouTube:

youtube.com/bertstephan

Bert’s DVD‘Motivational Light’:

motvatonallght.com

Sites that Bert visits jeanloupse.com

vvantve.com (Sara Lee)

5 . 0

Concluson

http://www.bertstephani.com/

http://www.youtube.com/bertstephani

http://www.motivationallight.com/

http://www.jeanloupsieff.com/

http://www.vivantvie.com/

http://www.vivantvie.com/

http://www.jeanloupsieff.com/

http://www.motivationallight.com/

http://www.youtube.com/bertstephani

http://www.bertstephani.com/

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5 Concluson

I hope this eBook will inspire you not only on a technical but also on a creative level. I sure know writing it and interviewing

7/30/2019 Making Light 2 (1)


my colleagues inspired me. It inspired me to do more personal work. To try out new techniques and experiment. But most oall, it taught me all over again that, fash or no fash, the magic doesn’t happen i you don’t press the shutter.

All pictures (except or some manuacturer-supplied shots) in chap-

ters 1 to 3 copyright Piet Van den Eynde, unless noted otherwise.

Some behind-the-scenes shots © Serge Van Cauwenbergh.

Images in the chapter 4 interviews copyright by the respective interviewees:

Andy Van den Eynde, Tom Museeuw, Jürgen Doom and Bert Stephani.

Many thanks to all the models or their time and energy, to my ellow photo

their insights, to the great team at Crat & Vision or streamlining my mean

style, to the people o servix.be or logistical support and to Ruth or always

In the French-speaking part o Belgium, there

is a tradition o re-enacting the marches romNapoleonic times. Hundreds o villagers rom the

villages “entre Sambre et Meuse” gather in these

scenes. I had never thought o going there to

photograph, let alone bringing a fash, until I was

inspired by the interview I did with Andy.

Ater a long and tiring day, I had just packed all

my gear, ready to return home when I noticed this

scene. I quickly set up shop again, and shot some

o the best images o the day.

Advanced Use o O-Came

If you liked this eBook, you’ll love our library!

Exceptional photography education for the ridiculous

price of $5 at CraftAndVision com

http://www.servix.be/

http://www.servix.be/

http://c/Users/Luker/AppData/Local/Adobe/InDesign/Version%207.0/en_US/Caches/InDesign%20ClipboardScrap1.pdf


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craft&vision

Pixelated Image Communications Inc.

29115 RPO South Granville Post

Vancouver, BC V6J 0A6

Canada

[email protected]

CratAndVision.com

Copyright © Piet Van den Eynde

Editor & Publisher | David duChemin

Production Editor & Manager | Corwin Hieb

Copy Editor | Susannah Rohlo

Design & Layout | FiveGraphicDesign.com

Notice o RightsAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprod

transmitted in any form by any means without the prio

permission of the publisher.

PIET VAN DEN EYNDE

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