NZIPP Kingsize Scholarship

For the past 6 weeks I’ve been working with some very talented photographers who are part of the Kingsize NZIPP Scholarship. We devised the Scholarship as a way for professional photographers to up-skill in all areas and take their careers to the next level over 12 weeks. Each week we have a group critique, discuss on a specific topic and meet with a different guest speaker to talk about a specific area of photography such as production, posing or gallery curation. I also give each photographer a weekly technical assignment. Last week the assignment was about lighting on location. Although they are all experienced photographers, none had much experience taking battery powered studio lights on location.

The reason I love introduced lighting so much is that it is completely controllable and repeatable. As wonderful as natural light is- it cannot be trusted to give you the results you need because of things like seasons, clouds, location of the Sun and time of day. There are also locations where the natural light will never look nice such as on an open beach in direct sunlight- the shadows are much too hard. Or next to a shady cliff face where it is simply too dark.

Alice Doig wanted to achieve a fresh, light, summery look to her portrait of Keeley (Unique Model Management) with the beach and ocean as the backdrop. First Alice needed to create shade for her model to block the harsh, direct sunlight. To do this, she set up three lightweight Chimera frames with black fabric as a sort of makeshift arch which also acted as a negative fill, giving more definition to the model and providing edge separation from the light background. A single key light way used to give directional illumination and shaping. While the large dish used is relatively quite ‘hard’ and directional, it is far more flattering than direct sunlight and is just hard enough that it could pass for sunlight. A major benefit, of course, is that the key light could be positioned wherever Alice liked in order to include the most photogenic background. Which is something you can’t do with the Sun. The ambient daylight bouncing from the beach and everywhere else provided a relatively flat ‘fill’ which means that the shadows cast by the key light are distinct but not too dark.

Mandi Lynn took dancer Grace Woollett to a West Coast beach and wanted the capture the drama of performance in the landscape. Using a powerful (1,200j) Broncolor Move Pack and single flash head, she balanced the ambient light with the flash. The sun was low in the dusk sky and behind the subject meaning that she would be in shadow if ambient light only had been used. A standard P70 dish was selected to replicate the feel of sunlight and freeze the movement. By utilising both flash and constant light (daylight) to make this image, Mandi froze the action with an exposure time just long enough for a little motion blur to be present and communicate movement.

Penny Aspin found a perfect location for her dramatic portrait but the light was awful. The cliff is high and the model overshadowed by trees making for dark and flat lighting. The dim location required both a fill light and a key so she used a Broncolor Move Pack with two MobLED flash heads. The key light was positioned high to camera right. Penny chose a Chimera Octa 2 Beauty softbox which is a fantastic 24” collapsable beauty dish and perfect for this type of photograph. It provides light which is just soft enough to be flattering to sitters but also small enough to give good shape and definition to people and garments.

In each of these images, I think the photographer perfectly matched the position and quality of the light with the environment to make for a balanced and realistic result. All three of these portraits would be impossible without location lighting.

Luke