Tons of things going on here and it is a little hard to keep up. Three projects all at once and one semi stock assignment for a brochure. On top of all that I have to finish the articles I promised for this blog. So be patient and I will get the stories finished and up here as soon as possible.
While I play catch up you might check out some of the guy’s that can really write as well as build beautiful images, like Jeff Lynch and his photo safari this fall, Mark K surviving the east coast heat and Matt Brandon or Gavin Gough two of the best there are.
Kirk Tuck posted a series of photos and a story about shooting a print shop in NY years ago. Well I had a day planned to do a photo essay of the Printery in PT, and the post got me thinking about doing something a little different. So I planned to shoot most of it with my wide angle and think in B&W with no lights. I wanted to get a dramatic feel for the pressure and stress of a print shop and leave the color out of it, to make it about the people and machines that make printing what it is. I am down to 230 images and still sorting, bit of a slow day at the shop so we shot for half a day and I will put the story together over the next few days.
Jeffrey Morris over at The Photographer’s Journey has a great post and a little tongue in cheek outrage at something he read about light. The statement was that natural light was best or some such. Jeffrey and Heather do some wonderful things with a good set of Alien Bees and shape light to fit the ideas they come up with. And believe me they are tremendously creative people using light when and how they need it to tell a story.
The reason I bring this up is that that post came on the heals of a day where I am again semi breaking the conventional ideas to see what I can make of it. This falls in line with my Hard light photos and the discoveries we can make when we try something new. Jeffrey is right about learning and there is no ‘right/best’ way for anything. Does what you do, tell the story the way you want it to? Is it eloquent? These are the only constants we need to listen to. Learn to make your vision eloquent and focused on the message and that is done by giving something a try and instead of looking for the safe and quick fix try something that might fail. You will learn a lot more that way. Rarely do we think up a problem on our own that we don’t have the answer for, so I sometimes resort to “what happens if I do this” questions. So instead of posting for an answer on some forum go out and try it, you learn more if you don’t start with the answer.
I’ll get the images up as soon as they are done, just wanted to say something here while it was on my mind.
Day 2 on the hard light ideas that we tested out. This time with a patient friend that is the opposite of a pretty girl. Once again I used a VAl with a SB 28 on a monopod with an 8 in snoot pwr was set at variable settings and distances.
I liked the hard light look on Tony as his face is real expressive and he is willing and patient to try out about anything that you can come up with. We moved around town looking for different places to sort of run and gun. Decent backgrounds that could be used again as needed. 
On top of it all I also kept in mind that I wanted to convert some of these into B&W. Lighting with controlled light using a snoot or a grid give a little emphasis on the parts of an image you want to highlight. The next few ideas will be using this same idea only with light modifiers that soften the light and ease into the shadow areas. I want to see how far you can take one light and make it say what you want it to say.
Negative space and light help tell the story you want to tell, drawing the eyes to those places you want to emphasize and moving you through an image. I wish I could explain this a little better, however I never was a good teacher. It becomes something you just see. I had always seen the things that my art teachers talked about but didn’t really know how to put it into words. The first time I saw a real Rembrandt, not a print of one, I was floored at the way light was used. It changed the way I looked at things for ever. For the last 2 years I have been working harder on doing things with light by the book with little side trips to do it ‘my way’. It is a belief of mine that it is only ‘real’ if you have the basics down pat. There is a saying in shooting sports ‘Once is an accident, 3 times is on purpose’. Basics, basics, basics, then once they are easy try something new.
The whole point is to tell a story, convey an idea or change/open a perception. The next few weeks while work is slow the ideas and experiments will begin (subjects willing). As they say More to come……
Anyone that knows a little about Joe McNally knows that he is the master of off cam lighting and uses the right amount of light to get exactly what he wants. My friend Mark K just went to one of Joes workshops (see previous post) and the light looks like melted butter it is so smooth. Takes a lot to get light like that. Beautiful soft light, makes me just………
Well I got to thinking about how the light works if you go the other way. Hard Light with a grid and only one of them to work with. Last Sat. I talked my very beautiful friend (and the only young person I know) into letting me try out something different for shooting Pretty Girls. So we loaded up the Jeep and got my favorite VAL, Cheryl, and wandered around PT with only an SB28 with a SaxonPc grid on it. One light, one hard light and these are a few of the results.
Shot about 300 images I am still looking at them and thinking. Some good, some ok, some I even like. Althya isn’t a pro model so that was a little challenge but we had a lot of fun. Learned I really like hard light, and the angle it hits the subject is really important. Learned the fall off worked like I thought it would with a grid and you can keep the edges semi soft. Learned I like the freedom of only one light and a VAL to run it. The plan is to do the same thing again in a week or so and use iTTL for control instead.
Tried the same thing on Sunday with a different subject and some with two lights, to get a little more hard light information. These kind of days out with the camera and a couple of willing helpers are not only fun but some of the most productive learning I can think of. Trying stuff and seeing what it will do. I’ll get some of the ones from Sunday (not so pretty guys) and my thoughts on them up in a day or so. I just wanted to get a jump on it, share these images, and get some thoughts on hard light for something you wouldn’t normally use it for.
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