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Annie Leibovitz under fire for “poorly lit” photos of Black skin… Again

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Vogue recently hired famous photographer Annie Leibovitz to take photos of the United States Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. As perhaps we could have expected after those Simone Biles photos, people were all over Leibovitz over “poorly lit” images.

Many have criticized the photographer over the “poor” lighting of Jackson’s brown skin. Some attempted to “fix” the photos and relight them. And some went as far as claiming that Leibovitz should not be allowed to photograph Black people.

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How to shoot portraits in natural light and enhance them with LED lights

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The vast majority of us learn photography with the aid of natural light. Whether we started years ago with our parent’s film camera, or whether you found your passion for photography thanks to your smartphone, natural light was most likely the sole source of light in your shots.

For many, making that first step into the world of controlling the light can be a daunting one. Which light should I use and how do I learn to use it? Regardless of whatever light you choose though, one of the simplest first steps, is to use that supplemental light in conjunction with natural light and in this article I aim to show you a simple method of combining your lights with the ever-faithful natural light.

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How to recreate the lighting setups for six scenes in Stranger Things 4

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I don’t know about you, but I find movies and TV shows a great source of inspiration. And I don’t mean the story, but the technical side of things. The blocking, the lighting, the editing, the grade, the music used and more all set the tone for what we’re viewing and it’s fascinating to try to reverse engineer and figure out not only how but why they made the decisions they did.

But here, we’re looking at lighting. And specifically, the lighting for certain scenes from Stranger Things 4. Bangkok-based photographer and filmmaker MIXXPST, along with his friend Gift Lee, decided to have a go at recreating some of the scenes from the popular show as they’re both big fans and I while they’re not pixel-perfect replicas of the originals, they illustrate some of the principles very well.

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Create magical portraits using just one umbrella with these 5 different set ups

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It’s easy to feel overwhelmed with options when you first get started on artificial lighting. There seem to be so many tutorials out there for four or five light setups. But many of us begin shooting with natural light, and often from a single light source (ie. a window). It stands to reason then, that the easiest way to learn to shoot strobes is to begin with just one light.

In this video, photographer Emily Teague shows us five different setups using just one umbrella light. There’s no shame in only using one light if you know what you’re doing to manipulate it. Often the results are incredibly beautiful, and if you’re on location there’s something to be said for bringing less gear with you!

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Lighting setup: Indoor swimwear shoot

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Shooting swimwear outside in natural light is nearly always the best solution, after all, the bright, crisp sunshine is an easy-win when it comes to making swimwear look good. But what if an outdoor shoot simply isn’t practical or even possible due to location and of course weather?

In this article I’ll discuss a simple indoor setup that can be created in almost any sized space and with standard kit. This setup isn’t trying to synthesise daylight indoors like I’ve done before, but it is about recreating that feeling of an outdoor shoot and I’ll share a couple of tricks I employ to do just that.

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Nanlite launches its new PavoBulb 10C high CRI RGBWW LED light for practical light replacement on set

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Nanlite has released their new PavoBulb 10C. It’s an RGBWW colour-mixing LED light designed to replace practical bulbs on-set when you need to get a little more control over how they look to camera. With the plethora of dodgy cheap consumer CCFL and LED bulbs on the market these days that people often use in their homes and businesses, these will be a welcome tool in the arsenal of filmmakers.

It is essentially Nanlite’s answer to the Aputure Accent B7C, released in September 2020, but for the Nanlite ecosystem, offering remote control through the NanLink app and a variety of other methods. It offers a CRI of 95, a TLCI of 97, over 36,000 colours with 15 customisable preset modes and a slew of other features.

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Watch: Comparing small vs large softboxes to help you decide which you should buy

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There’s a moment that comes to everybody who eventually starts breaking away from using solely natural light and moving towards artificial lights to give you a bit more control and consistency. Whether you’re a photographer, filmmaker or YouTuber, you’re going to one day have to decide on what to buy to be your first, or perhaps only softbox.

In this video, Sam Holland walks us through the differences between a hard bare light, a small softbox and a large softbox to let us see the kind of light it produces as well as the benefits of each type of hard, slightly soft and very soft light. In the context of Sam’s video, it’s largely based on the YouTube or presenter style lighting with just a single modifier, but which deserves your money?

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Why filmmakers love lamps – should you use one in your next video?

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This is a rather interesting observation that I’ve never picked up on before but I’ll sure be on the lookout for in the future. Have you ever noticed how many lamps appear in movies? Sometimes even in particularly awkward or unusual places? Filmmaker and YouTuber Patrick Tomasso certainly noticed after recently rewatching Eyes Wide Shut. He then studied other movies and noticed they were everywhere.

They’ve been around in cinema for years and it doesn’t look like they’re going away any time soon. But why? Sure, lamps exist in the real world, but not usually to the extent that they appear in certain films and certainly not in all of the places that they pop up in movies, either, as Patrick illustrates.

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Lighting Technique: How to photograph people with top-down sci-fi lighting

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I’m sure you’ll all be pleased to hear that it’ll be a short and sweet one this week ;) Nothing mind-bending or buried in lighting theory, just a simple 2 light setup with some colour! – (famous last words).  The idea behind this look for me was to create a sci-fi style of light coming directly from above. Couple that with some contrasting colour from below and a little separation behind and I’m done.

In my mind I wanted it to be smokey or hazey like those spooky 80s sci-fi movies. So either a misty night or even smoke from spaceship exhaust – think, ‘Close encounters of the third kind’. This isn’t strictly super-relevant, but early ideas like this can help you immensely when it comes to lighting a subject if you know what you’re trying to achieve first.

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How to create 30 different interview and portrait lighting setups in less than 15 minutes

While understanding how light actually works is a much more reliable way to figure out how you’re going to light your subject, when you’re just starting out, it helps to rely on some tried and trusted lighting setups and techniques to get you up and running. The more different setups you try, the more you learn to understand how they work, the better you’ll understand light as a whole.

In this video, commercial filmmaker Austen Paul shows thirty different interview lighting setups in under 15 minutes that will give you plenty of options to get you started. And don’t let the “interview” description fool you, these lighting setups are ideal for photographers shooting portraits, too.

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