Thursday
Aug052010
A photo project every photographer should do.
Thursday, August 5, 2010 at 05:44PM | Kevin Kubota I've been wanting to do this project for some time, but my upcoming presentation for Skip's Summer School next week in Las Vegas gave me the impetus to do it sooner, rather than later. My presentation will be called, "The Power of the Project", and I'll talk about how taking on photography projects - in many different capacities, can alter your course as a professional significantly. And by alter, I mean in a good way! The presentation will illuminate how projects - from simple daily photo challenges, to technical experimentation projects, to significant personal growth quests, can feed your professional growth and overall success.
One of the projects I'm going to be talking about is this "Lighting in a Day" project we did. Essentially, I got together with another photographer, my buddy Benjamin Edwards, and a couple of friends for models. Our goal was to take a small selection of lighting accessories we had and come up with as many different looks as possible - using the tools to get great lighting in just about any existing situation. We worked in full sun, open shade, partial sun, indoors near windows and indoors in the dark. We challenged ourselves to come up with as many different looks as possible and to find ways to create beautiful light no matter what we had to work with. We got to play with accessories and even lenses we had, but hadn't used much (including a Nikon 85mm f2.8 PC lens). We found new ways to use things we had, but had previously put to use only one way.
In my presentation, I'll be showing the images we made, and all the setup photos that show exactly how we lit the scenes and what equipment was used. It was a great, although exhausting, day and we both came away with new ideas to use at our next paid session. Ben and I vowed that we should do this every month!
This shot below was from an outside, full-sun location where we wanted to create something dramatic while dealing with the difficult direct sunlight. Ben hooked up his Alien Bee moonlight to a beauty dish and powered it with a portable battery pack. I set the 85mm f2.8 PC lens to f22 and 1/250 sec at ISO 200. This darkened the existing light enough to create more of an evening, dramatic background. The alien bee was on full power to give f22 with the beauty dish at about 4 ft. from the subject.
With this type of directional lighting, it's important to keep the direction of the light above and at the correct angle to the subjects face to avoid unattractive shadows. For this reason, Ben put the light on a monopod so he could move it as the model moved her face in different directions.
tagged Lighting, projects in Journal Entries, Tips & Tricks
Lighting, projects in Journal Entries, Tips & Tricks
Reader Comments (7)
Beautiful! Kevin, you always come up with such great challenges for expanding ones skills!
Nice! I love it! Good inspiration!
Fantastic! I wish I was going to Skip's Summer School.
Kevin - This is such great information. Thank you for taking the time to teach this important & valuable item. I am learning new things each and every day as I blossom into a photographer. Your thoughtfulness is much appreciated.
I would so love to learn lighting like this!! but since i can't afford something like summer school at this time it will just have to go on my bucket list!!