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Lighting 101 is the core foundation of Strobist. It is a free, start-from-zero tutorial that will teach you the basics of lighting and minimalist lighting gear. Lighting 101 will have you up and running in no time—and at minimal expense.
Lighting 102 is the sequel to Lighting 101. Where L101 was about gear and basic concepts, L102 will teach you how to further understand and control the qualities of your light to make it do your bidding.
Lighting 103 is a deep dive into color. It explores the intersection of light and color to help you give your photos more nuance, realism and depth.
Strobist Lighting Cookbook combines the concepts learned in L101-103 to give you more understanding and fluidity with your lighting. We also explore some of the shoots from a 360-degree/ecosystem perspective.
A Baker's Dozen: Here you'll find a sampling of posts to help you understand the scope of the lighting education on this site.
On Assignment features full walk-throughs of over 170 real-world assignments, complete with discussions ranging from lighting to concept to execution—and even some screw-ups.
It (largely) follows my path as a newspaper shooter and beyond, progressing from simple speedlights to more complex studio flashes.
Sad fact: There are a lot of companies that make some pretty crappy lighting gear, but are still happy to take your money. The Strobist Gear Guide is designed to help you avoid making many of the costly rookie mistakes I made over the first few years of my career.
This is the gear that works for me, day in and day out. It is solid, reliable and will get the job done without destroying your wallet.
Books are gear for your brain. Chosen wisely, they represent some of the best value for dollar you can spend as a learning photographer.
Featured on the Strobist Bookshelf are my current favorites, winnowed from hundreds of books read over the course of my career. It is a relatively short list, but there are solid selections for nearly any lighting photographer.
Since 2017, I’ve led annual workshops in Cuba and Vietnam focused on thinking like a photojournalist while traveling with your camera. The Traveling Photographer's Manifesto is, in many ways, the book version of that workshop. More, here.
Platon Interview on Russia Today
Alert Reader Tom Hayton was searching for the photographer Platon on YouTube and found this 25-minute interview from Russia Today, a channel I can safely say I almost never get to watch.
Two things:
One, this is not about light but does give a very good look into Platon's approach and bedside manner. It's an interesting look into some of the thinking that goes into photographing famous (or infamous) people.
Remember, Platon is Mr. Hotshot in Russia after the Putin Time MoY cover. He figured out his light a long time ago, and its the interpersonal stuff that gets him the moments in his photos.
Second, the audio is off. And it creeps worse and worse throughout the vid. So you may as well just listen to it while you have your work stuff up onscreen this morning. Although they do pepper the interview with many of his pix, so there's that.
UPDATE: Apparently, Platon's site is not equipped to handle the inbound traffic level you guys are generating. Long story short, we sorta crashed it. That was certainly not our intention, and they are working on it as we speak.
UPDATE #2: He's back up! __________
If you aren't familiar with the work of British photographer Platon (pronounced "plah-TOHN") you should check his stuff out. The A-List editorial and commercial photog shoots almost all of his photos with one soft frontal light source (sometimes adding a background light) and a wide-angle lens.
You'll see lots of stuff that you'll recognize on his site - he did that controversial shot of Bill Clinton, spread-eagle in chair for Esquire for example. (He coaxed the expression by asking the President to "show me the love.")
His site has an "interviews" page, containing three videos, all of which I all found very interesting. This guy is working with a simple (albeit not cheap) setup and continues to explore a very well-defined lighting style through his body of work. Nothing particularly complex about it, either.
This is the kind of stuff you can do at home with your dSLR and an umbrella'd speedlight. But the devil, er, the quality, is in the details. And Platon's example is an excellent lead to follow if you are looking to expand your thinking without expanding your gear bag.
One thing to pay close attention to while watching these videos is the way he interacts with his subjects. Once the light is set up, that's really what makes the photos.
We've featured Platon before, what with the Eliot Spitzer photo, and the cool videos on his site. I love his simple lighting, and even more so his entire approach to portraiture.
If you have ever been nervous before a big shoot, you'll really appreciate his video interview about shooting Vladimir Putin for Time's Man of the Year cover. Every time I hear Platon talk it makes me want to re-think my whole approach to shooting people.
Thanks much to Rob over at APE for the heads-up.
_________
If you are going to go to the trouble to shoot a head shot (or, "mug shot," as we called them at the newspaper) you may as well set up good light. This can elevate a head shot into a portrait and yield a photo suitable for many more uses.
And if you are going to make a portrait, shooting a range of expression can further expand the ways in which the portrait can be used.
Hit the jump for a very good, current example. __________
British photographer Platon (whose site we accidently overloaded when we all showed up to watch his videos a few weeks back) photographed Eliot Spitzer before he became better known as Client #9.
(At least, I am assuming he shot Spitzer before that, as pretty much nobody has been near Spitzer with a set of lights since. I would think that not even Platon is that smooth...)
The photo, seen above, appears as lead art, running full-page on a two-page spread on pages 24-25 of the March 24th U.S. edition of Time Magazine.
Platon's photo was lit with a simple, two-light scheme -- soft source directly above the camera, back light aimed at the background. He usually uses a medium-format camera, with a moderately wide-angle lens, which creates both intimacy and lots of detail in his portraits.
Reverse engineering notes:
The location of the nose shadow (butterfly position) reveals the position of the front light source: above the camera. We can also see the front light source reflected in a specular highlight on the forehead. The softness of the highlight-to-shadow transfer area further reveals it as a soft light source.
The even quality of the background light tells us it was almost certainly behind the subject. It was either between the subject and the background, aimed toward the back, or behind the paper, aimed forward at the paper.
Where is the chin light coming from? Looks like the shirt, to me. White shirts kick a ton of fill in at close range. And it would have been awfully hard to hide a mini softbox under Spitzer's chin.
But what about that expression? The same photog who famously got Bill Clinton to "show me the love" (resulting in another much talked-about photo) captured Spitzer in a quiet, downcast moment, not even making eye contact with the camera.
Generally, you do not get much time when shooting celebrities and other famous people. So you have to spend your ammo wisely. You want to get a photo that connects with the viewer, but you don't have to hold the button down and dupe that look continuously for the whole three minutes you have them captive in front of you. Do you really need that 37th version of a canned smile with eye contact?
Instead, when you are shooting a headshot, spend a little time grabbing the smile (that's what they'll be expecting to do anyway) and get it out of the way. Then spend the rest of your time exploring different expressions -- quieter expressions, no-eye-contact looks, etc. It is a little more difficult, because you have to create the conversation that evokes the various looks.
But it is worth the effort. Neutral expressions are far more versatile in what they connote. A smile say only a couple of different things (maybe a couple more, if you have a dirty mind) but the quieter expressions can make much more powerful photos.
I would go so far as to say that this photo probably was not the final edit from the original shoot. It is very appropriate in the context of Spitzer's sudden collapse in the wake of a prostitution scandal. But it hardly would fit for a photograph of the "Sheriff of Wall Street" even a few weeks ago.
The fact that Platon had the presence of mind to both evoke and then capture the contemplative moment of Spitzer yielded a stunning photo which may turn out to be the iconic image of an imploded politician. Kudos, too, to the picture editors and designer at Time Magazine for spending the square inches to give it the weight it deserves.
Nuts and bolts takeaway: Not everyone you shoot is going to get caught at the Mayflower hotel with their pants down. But if you are going to go to the trouble to light someone, make sure you take the time to work some different looks into your session. _________
The WSJ has a pretty cool ad campaign that uses "behind the scenes" videos of the photo shoots that created the stills for the campaign. What surprised me was just how simple the light was for such an expensive series of photos.
The shooter is UK-based "Platon," and light could not be simpler. It could be pretty much duplicated with a white wall and a single SB in a shoot-through umbrella. The guy just gets right up in there with the umbrella next to Crow and the wall and it becomes a huge, soft frontal light source.
You can see Sheryl Crow's shoot here, and there are eight others to watch, too.
The above photo contains a cleverly hidden Strobist reader, Photoplasia, who is already playing with the lighting technique.
Click on the pic to comment on how beautiful he looks next to Sheryl Crow...
In this most eclectic edition of Speedlinks, we feature:
The "Crotch Flash," a "POS," a slideshow without slides, an inside job gone horribly wrong and a little piece of American history... __________
• WTJ has a video interview with a shooter who was pretty much assigned to shoot an entire issue of a fashion mag. Of interest to the alternate-style lighting folks, the "crotch flash," which shows up at about the 8:00 mark.
• You know how all of those photo gear review articles in magazines will sometimes tiptoe around the fact that they absolutely hate something? Well, someone forgot to tell The Online Photographer about that rule.
• Well worth a listen: Audio from Platon's presentation at this year's Eddie Adams Workshop. (EAW '89 alum here, representin'.)
• Talk your way into the White House: Check. Get images for assignment with sneaked in amateur camera: Check. Destroy your SD card in an effed-up card reader afterwards: Check. (Now what?)
• Last but not least, Matt Mendelsohn, the photographer who made that wonderful election night photo at the Lincoln Memorial, has released it as a signed, limited edition print.
If you (or someone you know) is going to be particularly stoked on January 20th, this would be an extremely cool way to photographically mark the occasion. And if you are a picture editor putting together your preview coverage for Inauguration Day, it's a heckuva moment -- 45 years in the making.
Over the last nine years many cool videos have graced the pages of Strobist.com. Here, in the order in which they originally appeared, are the Top 100.
Windows open in tabs for easier multi-video browsing:
Like Platon, photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders does most all of his portraiture with one, soft light. So he's an especially good person to learn from if you are still waiting to snag that second flash.
Greenfield-Sanders has made a career out of shooting elegant portraits of people, lit simply but beautifully with one light source. He also uses large format cameras for their extreme detail and lush tonal range. This consistent setup allows him to spend his time exploring expression, detail and subtle subject/photographer interactions.
This Ovation TV excerpt gives a little look into how he works, and how he approaches his interaction with subjects. Hit the jump for links and two more videos: One from a Fashion Week project, and the second a li'l sump'm-sump'm for the laydies...
