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Understanding Light – Working with hard light

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Being able to look at an image and understand the lighting within it is not crucial to becoming a great photographer. But having the ability to look at another image you love and recognise the qualities that stand out to you will undoubtedly help you to become a better photographer far faster.

Last week we looked at how important being able to understand light can be and I also highlighted where many self-taught photographers struggle with this in today’s industry. If you missed last weeks article then I recommend you take a look to see some of the pitfalls self-taught photographers can struggle with as today’s article leads on from that.[Read More…]

Understanding light – an introduction

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This article aims to look at how we as photographers ‘understand’ light. It may seem obvious to many of you, but to a vast majority of us, it’s simply not quite that easy. But what does it truly mean to understand light? Do we really need to understand light to take great photos? The simple answer is no…. but I guarantee it will help.

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5 modifiers for photographers on the move

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A little while ago I was teaching one of my lighting workshops and one of the attendees was looking to implement some of the set-ups I was sharing into his workflow. Seems simple enough right? Well it turns out this photographer was a Formula 1 trackside shooter that needed to get portraits of drivers and crew. As you may well imagine, there is limited time to setup a photoshoot in a busy pit-lane on race-day, so he was after lighting modifiers that would be suitable for his slightly more ‘run-and-gun’ portraits.

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Colour in Cinema: Daredevil

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I’m not a fan of western superhero franchises.

Yes I fully appreciate that I’m in the minority here and it’s certainly not my intention to turn you away in the first sentence, but rather to solidify the fact that this exploration of colour in cinema does not come from a fanboy solely driven by vapid, one dimensional characters and napkin narratives, but rather pure adoration of a masterwork in cinematography.

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Use coloured LED lights instead of gels to add vibrant colour to your shots

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This is the last part of a three part mini-series of articles on LED lights for photographers. Part 1 looked at the pros and cons of commercial level LED lighting for photographers, so if you missed it, Do LED Lights Have a Place in Your Kit? – Part 1: Pros & Cons. Part 2 saw us test the viability of using coloured LED bulbs in our strobes, including what to look for and what I recommend. Here’s the link to that one too if you missed it Do LEDs Have a Place in Your Kit? Part 2: Coloured LED Modelling Bulbs.

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Using coloured LEDs as modelling lights for your strobes

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This is the second part of a three-part series of articles on LED lights for photographers. Part 1 looked at the pros and cons of commercial level LED lighting for photographers so if you missed it, here’s a link – Do LED Lights Have a Place in Your Kit? – Part 1: Pros & Cons.

In this weeks article, I aim to test a selection of cost-effective, coloured LED bulbs that can be used in your strobes instead of regular tungsten modelling bulbs. Are they any good? What creative options can they provide to us? And is it worth spending a little more to get some decent ones?

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The pros and cons of adding LED lighting to your photography kit

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In this article, I look at what LEDs actually are, how they started out and where they sit in the world of photography now. Many photographers have switched over to using LEDs, but do they have a place in your kit and why aren’t we all using them?

To avoid making this one article ginormous, I aim to separate it out into three parts. Part 1will be the pros and cons of LEDs, part 2 will be testing a variety of coloured LED bulbs in our strobes and part 3 will cover using them on a model shoot including advice and lighting diagrams.

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How to emulate dappled natural light in the studio using flash

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Sometimes the hardest lighting setups to achieve are actually the ones that look the easiest. For years I’ve wanted to emulate that dappled lighting you see through leaves on a sunny day, or that rippled light you see at the bottom of a swimming pool when the wind catches the water. Like I said, this should be relatively easy to recreate in a studio in theory, as every natural light setup is only ever one light. How hard could that be? (<- photo-nerd pun)

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