A Study in Controlled Lighting

Copyright 2014 * Tim Lewis Photography

This is a practice image. For this picture I wanted to start out and make a portrait on a light background that had the subject’s face emerging from shadow. So it’s half silhouette, half mysterious portrait. This is a pretty tricky thing to pull off, you have to have really strong light control in order to light the front of the face but not the rest of the head/ears/shoulders. And to add to that challenge, I wanted a vivid splash of colorful light coming in as an accent on the darker side of the face.

The way I solved this was to use a gridded stripbox for the front of the face, and then set up a gridded speedlight with two purplish gels camera right. Then it was just a matter of placing a gobo to keep the magenta light off the shoulder and ear, put a speedlight behind for the background, and it’s done.

This is one of those setups that is invaluable. You’re learning about how to control light and shadow on a subject, and how to put light exactly where you want, and not anywhere else in the frame. Using this same technique I could put a magenta accent highlight almost anywhere on a subject, highlighting whatever feature I want to highlight. It’s super controlled, so you definitely don’t want your subject moving around a lot, but once it (and they) are locked it the results can be spectacular.

When you’re just starting out as a photographer the first thing people do is start to throw a lot of light around in all directions. That’s a great place to begin, but as you progress as a technician you should always be looking for ways to refine your control over the light, deciding where it should go and what it should do. Tell the light what to do. Your images will be better for it.

A Study in Controlled Lighting

Creating Textures with Photoshop Brushes

This video by Aaron Blaise is a really great showcase of how to use photographic references to create realistic textures in digial paintings. This tutorial definitely leans more in the illustration direction than most photographers go, but there’s a lot of really great tips and tricks in there that could very easily be applied to photographic retouching. The trick Aaron does at 9:35 using an erodible brush to emphasize highlights on the wrinkled texture… I could definitely see myself using that one on an image in which I was trying to bring the viewer’s attention to something like an elderly man’s skin texture.

Looking outside of straight up photography for ideas and techniques can be very very rewarding. Suddenly your influences and teachers become endless.

Creating Textures with Photoshop Brushes

Challenge - Trope to Treasure

the trope I see more than any other.

This is an idea I had for a self challenge. Basically think of a photography trope… an idea that has been done to death. Photoshoot on railroad tracks. Portrait in front of a rustic brick wall. Picture of homeless person looking sad. Take that idea and use it as a starting point. Figure out a way to turn it on it’s head, or to shoot it in a way that no one’s ever done before. It doesn’t have to be mind blowing or super insightful, but you have to try and figure out how to make it different and your own.

There are so many photography tropes out there. guy with a guitar. girl with suitcase. wingback chair in a field. bed in a field. Choose one and then add one as many ideas as you can. Maybe the bed in the field is on fire. Maybe the guy with a guitar is terrible, and everyone wants him to stop playing. Maybe the chair in the field is being used by wildlife. Subvert, break, and rearrange the elements of  tropes into something new. Remix remix remix.

Challenge - Trope to Treasure

Romantic Landscape Idea

The Romantic Era was an art movement that peaked between about 1800 and the 1850s. It was mostly a reaction to the Age of Enlightenment, which put people solidly at the center of the universe. During the Romantic Era landscape painters would often paint these large, sweeping landscapes with a teeny tiny human figure in there somewhere. They were all about emphasizing the grandeur of nature towering over humanity. Kinda like this painting by Thomas Fearnley from 1838 (notice the tiny human in front of the glacier):

Thomas Fearnley, Grindelwald Glacier, 1838

So I was thinking about that art movement, and how it seems like nowadays (especially in advertising images) whenever you have an image of man and nature it’s usually one of man dominating the environment, the human subject is big and towering, often in a “conquering” type pose. Nature is the the arena in which the subject is winning. Kinda like in these:

Here the emphasis is very much on the human overcoming. It’s more about the human surmounting nature and being superior to it.

So my idea is to pair up images that explore both of those concepts. Perhaps an image of a mountain peak (with tiny human) next to a picture of a person scaling the face of the peak. A picture of a massive twisting river winding around a tiny campsite and then a closeup of a person kayaking dramatically through the rapids. By going from nature is epic and towering over humans to humans are pushing through nature both concepts are emphasized. I think if it is done well, the viewer would walk away thinking that 1. nature is huge and impressive and 2. humans are even more impressive for getting out there and persevering.

So that’s my idea. I probably won’t get after it, since I’m not a sports photographer, but I think it’s a good idea, and would be an interesting project to undertake.

Romantic Landscape Idea

Recent Lighting Test

Recent Lighting Test