How to Start a Photography Business - Lighting Techniques

Lighting Techniques

• Strobes: A lot of people don't know what strobes are. It's basically just a giant external flash. It's the same thing as a flash that you would have on a camera. Usually, they're round and it has a little flashbulb that's on it that's in the round circle. And you can control these with an external flash sync cable and it syncs right up to your camera. They even have a wireless device that will actually trigger the external flash and trip when you hit your button to push down for when you want to take the picture. Strobes are used in the professional world that every photography studio uses. There's all different kinds. There's some basic ones; there's some middle of the road; and there's some high-end ones. In this case, you're not going to need something that's going to be that high-end.

• Defused light: You have different kinds of devices to create defused light. You have an umbrella. A lot of people have seen these. And there's different ways to defuse the light. You can take the strobe and you can bounce it off of the umbrella and then shoot it back to your subject. That creates a nice soft light or you can turn the actual strobe around and shoot through the umbrella to your subject. That's another way to create a nice soft light. My Favorite is the soft box, it's basically a huge box just like it says and it has a white screen over it and you shoot right through it. And it usually gives a really nice light that wraps around your subject.

• Budget Lighting: You can create your own. I've seen this done--where you take some 2x4s and you nail them together and you take a white sheet and you stretch it over the 2x4s and then you shoot your strobe through it. And that creates your soft box. It's basically the same thing. So those are some options for diffusing your light. Using window light can work really well, but you need a window in the room and if you're traveling with this portable studio that I'm going to show you how to do, you might not have a window light in that room. But if you do, you just want to find a window nearest your subject and then bounce the light with a poster board on the other side or a sheet. Something white. So you can be creative with that. But something white to bounce that light from the other side. Because if you only have a window on one side of the room, then you're going to want to fill in on the other side with a reflector or you might get lucky and have two windows on either side of the room. That would be your best scenario. And then natural light can be really, really nice. And that's what window light is. It's just a nice even light. If you've ever shot outdoors on an overcast day, you can see that the outside light is nice and even. So that's window lighting.

• Outside Lighting: Basically, you're just going to set everything up outside just like you would in a studio.  Basically just set up your mini-studio outside. Use a poster board or a reflector to direct the light. Again, it's almost what you see is what you get. So I would look and see where your best positioning is when you put a subject on the area where you're going to be shooting and see if you see any shadows. And if you do, well you've have to move the subject because that's the advantage with outside lighting. If you see a shadow, you get a shadow. It's pretty easy to remove them with a few basic techniques. Just take a poster board or something white and reflect the light or bounce the light back in. If you have an external flash, you can use use a fill flash and that will fill in for shadows as well. Using your overcast skies to create a nice even soft light. Think of this as a giant soft box, so use it whenever possible. If you think it's overcast and it looks gloomy, it's usually your best light. Create a screen to defuse the sunlight. Now if you have a real bright sunny day and there's no area where there's shade, you can create a defused light source by taking the same idea I talked about with the defused light of creating your own. You can take some 2x4s and put them together or pieces of wood and stretch a piece of sheet over them. And you can either build a stand or you can have someone hold it over your subject and that creates a nice even light as well.