Working With What You Have
I've been working on an off-camera lighting workshop geared towards subject-and-location-driven lighting, which simply means working with what you have. I took artist Bailie out with me and we scouted a few locations. You can find interesting and cool places to photograph people just about anywhere. This location is not much more than an abandoned warehouse off of a four-lane highway in small town USA. It's bent and broken, grown over and spray painted. Most people would have driven right past it and not given it a second look. But when you start pulling lights out you can turn almost nothing at all into something worth looking at in a matter of minutes. This shot took about 15 minutes start to finish.
The white balance is set to Cloudy and it’s a basic two light set-up using Nikon Speedlights. The main light is set to quarter power with a grid spot, it's four feet above the subjects face and the light stand itself is about three feet away from him.
The second light, the back light, is set to full power with two CTO gels on it and simply stuck in the back of the sliding-metal door. I did have to flag it with a Tupperware top to keep the spill under control on his face. I wanted the separation but not a flood of orange light on his face.
It's all trail and error for the most part. I started with the ambient light. It's about 3 stops under, flat and kind of gray in the open shade. Once I was happy with the ambient light I worked on the back light. One CTO gel wasn't strong enough so I added a second gel. When the light on the inside of the sliding door was rich enough and the exposure was correct I added the subject and placed the main light. While working on the main light I noticed a good bit of the back light spilling over onto his face so I went back and added the gobo. A few more test shots while moving the main light up and down until I was able to control the shadow under his chin and I was ready to shoot. I came down off the dock after about 20 or so shots and started shooting through the overgrown weeds and trees coming out of the parking lot.
