Umbrellas On One Side, Try It

Think of some very basic concepts when you light your subject. Rarely in a natural light world does light have multiple directions. If our source is the sun then we must relate to the fact that it bounces off different elements in the photograph. Direct sun bouncing off a white wall makes a great soft source for a photograph. The light has one direction. With other sources being secondary and having less strength. So when we artificially light a subject we need to remember this. Learn this and it will affect your lighting in a very positive way. When I’ve mentioned this to photographers I get comments about how their mentor always said “light comes from one source like the sun”.

Try it Please. Put both umbrella’s on the same side of the camera. This will give you a lighting quality much like a large softbox. Umbrellas will give you round catchlights in the eyes and they allow you to wrap around the subject. You’ll see that this is very professional in appearance with a very gradual trransition from highlight to shadow.

Position one umbrella near 45 degrees to the subject. With only this light on determine a good exposure for your portrait. Use your camera preview and histogram in the absence of a light meter.

Now position your second umbrella between the first umbrella and the camera. This can be placed at different positions to control the intensity of the shadow side of the face. Make sure the exposure stays the same or only slightly in need of a tweak. The second light is truly a fill and should not alter the exposure. Be sure for your test to do like I did. With two lights of equal power let your main light be at half power. I have used 2 White Lightning Ultra 600s. Exposures are recorded with the main light only, with fill light at it’s weakest setting, at a middle-power setting and at a full power setting. If you like, other lights can be added to the set. For our illustrations, there are only two lights, the main and the fill. No other lights.

We have created a portrait with lighting from one direction. We have not used cross lighting. The lighting has a nice wraparound look with a smooth transition from highlight to shadow.

Another Perspective. I like a good deep shadow. The good part of this is that it gives the illusion of thinning the face. Check our samples, the one lit with a full fill light seems that the face is wider than the images with more of a shadow. The flip side of this is the character of the face (wrinkles and bumps) are enhanced by the more contrasty lighting. Think of it this way, for every object whether it’s a face or bumps and wrinkles on the face there is a highlight and shadow. So when you choose to leave the shadow side of the face very dark then you also leave the shadow for each bump and wrinkle.

The photos that illustrate this post were made within a minute or two to maintain consistency. As the fill light gains in power through the series, the overall exposure gets to bright. I tried to balance in ACR and PhotoShop to keep the highlight side of the face the same so the shadow would be the only difference. By the way, the model is ME, Gary Culley. I am the writer, producer, editor and IT department of TEKeez.com. The photos were shot by my good friend Keith Renard. Be sure to see his exceptional photography at Skipworth.

Give it a try. It doesn’t fit for every situation but works great for a headshot and other portrait situations. Got a question? Leave me a comment or come to the TEKeez discussion at Flickr. Show me your pictures there also.

What is it that you’d like to know more about. If it’s brain surgery or airplane pilot related then I am not your guy. But I do know photography and I’ll share with you anything that’ll help.  

There are articles coming up to help with natural light-outdoor portraiture.  Also a great way to photograph your dog in a better pose than you've ever seen.  Research is being done on batteries, from how to mark them to charging the best ways. It's all coming soon!  GC

Histograms, Mountains and the Halfpipe

Recently, I had a theft from my car and part of the loss was a Minolta Flashmeter IV and a Color Meter. A sad day?  NOT!  I have a histogram on each of my cameras, and I’ve not missed the meters at all. Here is why?

Simple Lighting. Even if there are multiple heads to be used I start with my main or fill or a combination of the two at levels determined by the look I’m going for. After getting those set for the needed exposure determined by the histogram, I add accents as needed keeping details in the highlights. The detail in the highlight can also be checked with the histogram. This all applies to artificial or natural light.



This is the overall shot. Check out the highlights.


More than once the accent lights were adjusted to keep detail in the highlights. SO USE THE HISTOGRAM. On my cameras it can be visible, while having some transparency to it, so you can still see your shot. Models by Colors Agency.

Step One: Turn it on or master how you can access it as needed. Whether it’s a menu selection or a scrollable choice of how you view the small preview on the back of your camera. I prefer, in many situations, to see it more than the photo itself. Because, I just saw the photo in the viewfinder. Learn to make it appear and disappear.

Step Two: Make exposures with the histogram in the shape of a mountain. That guarantees that you have detail in the shadow and the highlight, as well as having the best ability to tweak, if needed, after shooting. If you know that you should have detail in the shadows and highlights, then your “mountain” should have air on the left and right. The main thing is that you are creating a “negative” that is “perfectly” exposed. What about situations where images have black without detail? There will be those situations where images have a pure black background. The exposure of the three men above is one example. There are areas of black with no detail in that image and its histogram shows it. There are images at weddings where the background is not lit and shutter speeds have to be high enough that areas photograph black without detail. That is a situation where we move to the half pipe (that’s right, the thing that skateboarders use). Here is another example with black background and see how the histogram is shaped because of it. Halfpipe.

Step Three: Confirm that what you have captured and what you want to show in your photograph match what is reflected in the histogram. The photograph above is a great example. We have a major amount of black in the image and that is shown in the histogram. There are just a few areas that are blown out highlights. The two round-down lights in the photo are blown out, and that is shown by the small bump on the right edge of the histogram. So when the exposure is made we can see how successful the image can be. Adjustments can be made as needed.

Conclusion: This all has to do with a concept that Ansel Adams fathered. Previsualization. If you know that your image (the interpretation of what you see) will have a major component of black without detail, watch for that on the histogram. If you know that you will have detail in every highlight, watch for that. The main thing to realize is that you have a very advanced meter in your camera and it informs you with the histogram.

School of Hard Knocks

It all started back in high school. Just loved the gadgetry-ness of cameras. Trips to the Treasury Drugs in Memphis were a highlight. Mom would do the shopping thing (Treasury was a pre-Wal-Mart large-everything store), and I would go check out the cameras, gizmos with a purpose…F-stops and shutters speeds and telephoto lenses. I finally got my first real camera, a Miranda Sensomat, RE. Actually, the “true” first was a Kodak Instamatic 104 with a flash cube. Wow! Now I had a 35 mm camera like the ones I am seeing in the magazines.

I never thought of myself as a reader, till I got addicted to photo magazines. I would read all that I could. This is where my education started with three magazines per month, plus annuals whenever I could. Popular Photography, Modern Photography and Peterson’s Photographic. I was so hungry to learn that magazines were bought knowing that only a few articles would be meaningful to me. I had a plan. I’d read what I could understand and look at the pictures. The magazines would be stored away and a year or more later scanning the contents would show new information that I then knew more about. More to read. Yeah!

Finally, got to a point where I could look at photos and figure out how it was made. Started making increasingly more pictures. Joined the Annual Staff at Wooddale High School. Won First Place in a high school photo contest.

Mom never looked in the magazines. I had my share of sick days in school, and when my mother went to pick up my prescription she had a standing request to pickup the three magazines. Mom didn’t charge me for those. I paid other months. It was amazing how many magazines delivered by mom had a large content of “naked” photos.

On to work, I graduated after the eleventh grade and worked for the year while my buds were seniors. The highlight of that time was making a trip with those seniors to Italy. Dove in to photography for that two weeks and loved it, but I still thought it could only be a hobby.

Sold real estate at 20 years old. Thought of going to a big time photo school. I was getting a general education but never got to Brooks Institute of Photography. Fell in love with a beautiful girl and married that beautiful girl. After a year in a sales job I went to work at a custom lab, making title slides and managing the other departments. Met people that also needed photography and started making money making photos! Yeaaaa! Still reading magazine, moving on to seminars and workshops.

Opened my first studio. It had 2100 square feet designed to my specs. Spent much time in the darkroom with mostly commercial/advertising photography. Learned a lot at the “School of Hard Knocks”. Always interested in passing it on. I did not have a mentor that gave me personal attention and Q/A time. Now that I know some of the local pros that were around then, I know they would have been glad to help. They are awesome folks and great friends. I’ve made it a practice to give information freely. Once I took a class on slide-making in Cincinnati given by Andre Proulz from Canada. He made a strong point of sharing what you learn. Then when you have a challenge that doesn’t seem achievable you’ll have someone to go to. So I’ll tell all I know and when I need you, I’ll come calling.

Recently, I thought about teaching photography on a small scale. Probably amateurs and advanced amateurs, basics and interesting tips and techniques. As I put some thoughts together I started a list of topics. Looking over the collection, I had a thought that all that information could be a book. I’m no writer. Then I saw a blog and saw that as a tool of our time for teaching. Here we go.

Find your magazines. Soak them up like a sponge. Study and read what you can. Put them away and learn more. Shoot lots of pictures. Come back to the magazines and see what more is now understandable. Read. There are some great sources of information and you can learn so much from all the sources. Be sure to check out Digital Photo Pro. Great reproduction of images and a good combination of art and technical information. Both camera and lighting and PhotoShop and Lightroom. For an extremely good source of PhotoShop information you need to see PhotoShop User Magazine. Step by step fixes and creative creation. American Photo is a good source of exceptional photography. It is not as much of a technical source but still a good source of information. Outdoor Photographer
is a great source of information and there is more beyond mountains, sunsets and wildlife. The images are unbelievable. Off the scale in saturation and vibrancy. But look closer. There is technical info that can help with whatever your pursuits are. Check it out!