Lighting 101: Snoots and Gobos and Grids

Now that you are getting comfortable with the idea of shooting a light into an umbrella or ceiling, creating the lighting ratio and being color correct, it's time to start stretching a little.Sometimes what makes a photo sing is not so much where the light is, but where it isn't. And, given that you already have a basic, off-camera strobe setup, you...

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Lighting 101: Using Gels to Correct Light

(Photo by Strobist reader Siddarth Siva)Some you may be starting to realize already, but I'll say it aloud: When lighting a photo it is not about absolute light levels. It's about relative levels. You can adjust for just about any overall light level you have by simply changing the overall exposure on your camera. So that zeroes the "absolutes" out.It...

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Lighting 101:Balancing Flash With Ambient, Pt 2

(Photo by Strobist reader Brent Williamson)Okay, now let's get out of the shade (or the indoors) and do battle against full sun with our off-camera flashes...When last we met, we talked about the idea of balancing flash with ambient. We were using the flash as a main light and the ambient as fill, but you do not always have to do it that way.Straight...

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Lighting 101: Balancing Flash and Ambient, Pt 1

Editor's note: To understand balancing flash and ambient, you should have a good, basic understanding of f/stops and shutter speed. That stuff can be found in lots of places (Google it) so I am not going to totally restate it here.__________F/stop, Shutter Speed and FlashWhile f/stop and shutter speed both control exposure, for our purposes it is important...

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Lighting 101: Hard Light

So, we have spent a decent amount of time on soft light modifiers. Soft light generally comes from physically large sources or modifiers—think umbrellas, walls, overhead clouds, etc. But hard lights—which come from small sources—can look really cool, too. It's just that hard flash gets a bad rap because of how mad it looks when mounted right on top...

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Lighting 101: Bare-Bulb Lighting

(Photo by Strobist reader Janaka RodrigueAs you have already seen, we can the hard light of your bare flash and soften it with an umbrella. We can further soften it by bouncing it off of a wall or ceiling. But we can also turn it into a 360-degree glowing light source.The old-school term for this is "bare bulb" lighting. That's because older flashes...

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Lighting 101: Bouncing off of Walls and Ceilings

I am thinking many of you already use your on-camera flashes creatively by bouncing them off of a ceiling or wall. This is a great technique, and one of the most common ways to get a taste of creating good light with your flash.(Photo by Strobist reader Leon Tolner)So why bother to take your light off of the camera when you are just going to bounce...

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Lighting 101: Using Umbrellas

Okay, now is where things start to get a little more interesting. Let's talk about your first "light modifier."An umbrella will almost certainly be your first light mod. (It is included in the jump starter kit, if you presently have one on the way to you.) Think of your flash as a very brief-but-powerful flashlight. And like a flashlight the business...

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On Assignment: Real Estate Developer

This shot of a commercial real estate developer shot in Baltimore's Inner Harbor is a good example of how to easily overpower daylight with a small, AA-powered strobe.Most high-end shoe-mount strobes these days are designed to calculate and provide the "right" fill flash values while sitting on your camera (or at arm's length with a TTL cord.) But...

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Lighting 101: Synching Your Flash

When your flash is connected to your camera, it syncs automatically. When it is off camera, you have to take care of this yourself. And there are several ways to do it.In the photo above, I synched everyone else's flash to my camera to to get "one of those lucky moments." Except it wasn't luck. I made it happen over and over again for this shot. More...

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Lighting 101: Umbrella Swivel Adapters

To attach your flash to a light stand, you'll need an umbrella swivel adapter. They are also called umbrella adapters, or just "swivels."This pretty straightforward. These are rugged and cheap at about ($15). Top to bottom, here's how they work.A. The Cold ShoeUnlike a hot shoe, this has no electrical connections. It just holds a flash. (Or, in many...

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On Assignment: Star Gazer

We all have our crutches go-to techniques, and one of mine is using a single flash as a backlight in an otherwise ambient-lit scene. I like the effect because it provides depth, color and separation, which really helps if your image is going to be printed on Charmin newsprint.Didn't need much flash here. One quarter power (on manual) and the coverage...

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On Assignment: Cicada

I almost always use light when shooting with a macro lens. In addition to adding to the quality and direction of light, it provides a smaller working aperture, with is important for scrounging some much-needed extra depth of field for close-ups.And this little guy, who was one of about a gazillion cicadas that invaded the mid-east Atlantic area as...

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On Assignment: Archeologists

While driving back from an assignment in Western Maryland I noticed some archeologists digging near a zoning sign for a new intersection.One of my favorite things about being a photojournalist is the "license to be curious" that comes with the job. So I stopped, got out, and ended up with a fairly interesting story. The light was typical mid-day light...

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On Assignment: Wind Tunnel

While shooting a story on the wind tunnel at the University of Maryland's Clark School of Engineering, I wanted to grab a photo of the giant fan that creates the 100mph+ winds for studying airflow around objects. The available light was depressingly crappy - about 1/10th of a sec at f/2.8 (ASA 400) with typical institutional sodium vapor as the color...

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On Assignment

Welcome to the On Assignment archive, where we translate the skills you learned in Lighting 101 to the real world. These posts include many of my own assignments from the last ten years, and you'll see my lighting skills growing right along with your own. Each On Assignment post links to the next. So if you want, you can eat 'em like peanuts. Enjoy.-DHWind...

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Lighting 101 - Ball Bungees

OK, can I tell you how much I am starting to like these things? Being a guy, I realize I am genetically predisposed to liking bungee cords. But the thing about the ball bungees is that they have no metal hooks to scrape up your gear. Sweet.Fellow Baltimore Sun photographer Karl Ferron turned me on to using bungees to secure a flash to a variety of...

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