Saving the World One Pixel at a Time

Ansel Adams once famously said that the difference between a good picture and a bad one was “knowing where to stand.” For studio photography you can add that the difference is also in knowing where to place the lights.  Let me show you what I mean: What follows are two photographs made in the same place—a friend’s living room—with the same equipment and the same subject in almost an identical pose. Any imaging tweaks I made after capture were identical for both photographs. While one shot was shot slightly looser than the other and I used a slightly different camera angle for the second one, the biggest difference is where I placed the light in both shots. And that’s what this post is all about: Knowing where to place the lights.

Caption: In the first shot of Jamie-Lynn I used a Canon EOS 1D Mark II with EF 85mm f/1.8 lens and an exposure of 1/80 sec at f/7.1 at ISO 400 with an EX 550EX speedlite on camera. It was used with a Sto-Fen Omni Bounce diffuser to produce a soft, flattering light. Fill is from a window at camera left. But the overall feel is flat. © Joe Farace

Caption: In the second shot I used the same camera and lens with a shutter speed of 1/250 sec to minimize the effect of the available light. A Flashpoint monolight with standard reflector is placed lower and slightly lower and left of the camera to create a different mood, which the model, after looking at the test shots, responded to with a tougher “don’t mess with me” look. I also got some natural hair light effect from the window but not as much fill. © Joe Farace

Joe Farace is the author of a new book called “Studio Lighting Anywhere” that’s available in all the best bookstores as well as Amazon.com

The first thing you need for an in-home (or in-apartment) studio is space. You don’t need much but more is always better than less. You can put a studio in a basement, garage, spare bedroom, or use a living room just as Mary and I did when we got started many years ago. Back then, we would set up the lighting equipment and backdrop for each shoot and knock it down and pack it away afterwards. That’s not the best way to shoot but it worked. In creating a studio from existing space you need to be both inventive and flexible. The image accompanying this post was made in the unfinished basement of my former home using an 8×9 foot space that was sandwiched between my model train layout at (what would be) camera right and an old sofa on the left. In the illustration (below) showing my original set-up, you’ll even see a water drainpipe on the left edge of the frame.

This photograph was made in my basement with the model two steps away from the furnace. Camera was a Canon EOS 50D and EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens. Exposure was 1/60 sec at f/11 and ISO 125. A monolight with softbox was placed at camera right. Another monolight was placed at camera left with a 36-inch white umbrella attached. A third monolight with barn doors was used at camera right near the edge of the background to accent the model’s hair. The image was originally captured in color and converted to black and white.

No matter where and what kind of space you use for your studio some compromises are inevitable. Using the basement means  gear can remain set up from shoot to shoot saving set-up time but for me it also meant I had to deal with low ceilings. Shooting in the garage, which I’ve also done, offers high ceilings providing more flexibility in lighting set-ups but that is not a viable option for me because of winter weather. In more temperate climates, this could be an ideal solution.

In the first portraits made in my original 8×9 foot space in my basement studio the lighting was provided by the two small, inexpensive and no longer manufactured Adorama monolights shown in the illustration. You could accomplish the same kind of lighting using speedlights. In addition, the only amenity my original basement studio offered was a stool and a 4×5 foot rug purchased at Target. It’s not a “real” photographic posing stool but one that I sit on to run my model trains. This set-up wasn’t fancy but it worked and over time I’ve expanded the studio and changed most of the equipment. In my new home I have a dedicated 11×15 room with 9 foot ceilings. How I set that up will be the subject of a future post. But the idea of today’s post shows you ca do studio photography anywhere.

Joe Farace is the author of a new book called “Studio Lighting Anywhere” that’s available in all the best bookstores as well as Amazon.com.

One of the things I like to do to get out of a rut is to shoot some photographs in direct monochrome mode. It doesn’t have to be all of the images in a session; just a few to see what happens. If you think that’s a bad idea because you worry about what happens if you change your mind and want that original at some later date to be in color? Many digital SLRs cameras have a RAW+JPEG option that lets you capture a monochrome (JPEG) and color (RAW) file at the same time. Some dual-slot camera, even let you simultaneously save each file type to a different card. My old but dependable Canon EOS 1D Mark II N lets me, for example, shoot RAW on the CompactFlash card and JPEG files onto the SD card.

If you prefer to capture in color and convert to monochrome later in the digital darkroom that’s not a bad idea either and throughout this book, I show before and after images (and did early in this very chapter) to show how black and white image created a completely different mood. The biggest differences is that all of my favorite retouching tools such as Imagenomic’s’ Portraiture and Anthropics’ Portrait Professional. Another great idea to prevent your photography from becoming stagnant is to make a new photograph each day. To see one example, I created an on-line gallery on my SmugMug page to give me the structure to do just that.

Caption: Here a very pregnant Tia Stoneman used the bay window in my old kitchen to anchor her right hand but (for jut this one shot) tossed me the great model cliché of the “hand behind the neck” pose and it added to what was a fun photograph for both of us. The image was shot direct in monochrome mode with a Samsung Pro 815 camera and an exposure of 1/40 second at f/8 and ISO 400 with the built-in flash fired as fill.

One of the most important elements in creating saleable portraits is knowing how to pose your subjects. You may be able to photograph a beautiful woman but if her pose is awkward, clumsy, or just unattractive, it will greatly reduce your ability to sell prints. And because often you’ll often be working with people that have not been photographed since their wedding or senior portraits, it’s also important to develop a good understanding of posing techniques and assist your subject as they move in front of your camera.

The basic glamour pose that I start with, with just a few variations, and use it as my “first pose” in a session. I ask the subject to put their weight on the foot that’s away from the camera placing them in a three-quarter pose. Here is something I’m going to repeat endlessly throughout this book:

Once you have a pose you like, refine it with a head tilt or moving hands and arms slight all the while changing your camera angle slightly and zooming (or walking around) to tighten or loosen the shot.

One of the most challenging parts of working in the studio—without a new, you might say—there’s nothing for the subject to interact with or do with their hands. In the example ( left) I talked to the subject while moving my hands around my face and head and watch how the subject mimics it. I really liked what Noelle did here. Working with the two Elinchrom Portalite lightbanks I placed on at camera left and behind me and the other Portalite was placed at camera right and close behind Noelle, who reminds of Fringe’s Anna Torv. Photo was shot with a Canon EOS 5D and EF 135mm f/2.8 SF lens.

Joe is the author of the forthcoming book “Posing for Portrait & Glamour Photography.” Look for it in 2013 from Amherst Media.

Electronic flash output is often measured in Watt-seconds (Ws,) a unit of electrical energy that’s equal to the work done when a current of one ampere passes through a resistance of one ohm for one second. Sometimes also called a Joule it’s basically a way to measure the power and discharge capacity of an electronic flash’s power supply. Think raw automobile horsepower but because Watt-seconds doesn’t consider reflector design it’s not a perfect indication of the total amount of light that can be produced by an electronic flash. Because of that, you’ll occasionally see Effective Watt-seconds used to give you some idea of what to expect from the flash.

This lighting setup places a Multiblitx Profilux monolights behind the model at about 45 degrees. A Profilux 500 is at camera left; the Profilux 250 (even though you can’t see it) is at camera right. You can’t see it because a reflector is blocking it from view and only the light from the 32-inch round reflector is bounced back to the model. An Adorama Belle Drape muslin background is used and is held with two Home Depot clips to add some—what else—drape to the material. © 2012 Joe Farace

Another method of measurement is lumensecond, a unit of measurement of light intensity falling on a surface. A lumensecond refers to the light of one Lumen for a one second or the equivalent, such as two Lumens for half a second. The number of lumenseconds produced by a particular flash system depends on how effectively the flash turns electrical energy into energy or Watt-seconds into lumenseconds. Most electronic flash units produce between 15 to 50 lumenseconds per Watt-second. What this means is that sometime an efficient 300 Watt-second system can produce as much light energy as an inefficient system that’s rated at 1000 Watt-seconds.

Some people prefer to use Guide Number (GN) as a measurement of flash output because it considers the entire lighting package. Guide Numbers are quoted in feet or meters (depending on where you live in the world) and are valid at a given ISO setting. The higher the guide number, the more the light output.