18) Advanced Lighting Workshop, George Woods - 24/10/17

Today we had a follow-up on our first lighting workshop, in which we tried lighting 3 different locations for environmental portraits. My notes from the workshop can be seen below.

As you can see I didn't take many notes during the session, because it was a more 'hands on' workshop. The first location we went to was in F Block, and we were asked to light the room naturally also letting light from the window behind the subject flow through. The shots we took in this first location are below.

We started off just taking a shot with the natural light of the room to see where needs picking up, and we decided to set up a light facing upwards for the ceiling to act as a soft box. We also added a side fill light with an umbrella to make the main light look less flat, and give some highlights to Jake.

(no lights just natural light)

(light pointing up at the ceiling)

(main light and fill light) In terms of a final image this okay, however I feel its a little overexposed because Jake looks quite washed out. However I'm happy with how the natural light looks in contrast to the artificial light of the room.

The second location we were taken to was a very dark small room, and again we had to light up our subject using artificial lighting. Again we started off just taking a shot of the room with its natural light. From this point we decided to add a light with an orange gel as the main light, placed behind Jake. We then added an umbrella side light to fill out the light of the room more.

(just natural light)

(main light with gel and fill light with umbrella). I feel these images are okay again, but I just feel like the image is bright and flat with no highlights in. Our group found it quite difficult to light this room and one of our lights wasn't firing properly, so with all factors considered the final image is a big improvement on how the environment looked in the first shot.

For our third and final location we went outside to take some portraits with the hammerhead and METZ flashes. We had one hammerhead flash going through a diffuser and then one METZ flash being handheld to combat any shadows.

(natural lighting with no artificial light)

(2 portraits above with the 2 lights mentioned).

All in all I found the workshop useful in terms of being challenged to light environmental portraits in some challenging spaces. I feel our groups work shows room for improvement in this area, because the portraits could be better. However in the short time allocated I'm pleased with the photos we produced and it has allowed me to practice my own lighting techniques which I can hopefully apply in my later work if needed.

#workshop #obsessions