Lighting Discussion - 11/21/09

I was recently lucky enough to attend a meeting with some great Seattle area photographers to discuss lighting. We were hosted by Heather Pearce and were joined by Douglas King, Kat Speyer, Heather Linn and Jessica Hanaumi. There were a couple sets of lighting set ups which we practiced different angles and configurations. This was very educational for me as I know very little about studio style lighting. It is always fun to learn and share with friends....

I demonstrated a technique for "soft, directional" lighting from a single on camera speedlite. This is using Neil van Niekerk's "black foamie" thing which is a 1/2 snoot but since it is homemade it costs less than $2, it is more versatile and you can find the parts (foam and hair ties) at Target, Wal-Mart or a craft store. http://www.planetneil.com/tangents/ He just posted a new article on his "black foamie" thing and this is a great resource for creating natural looking light. Here are some photos from the discussion. All photos were shot at ISO 640, 30mm, f/3.5, 1/160 and a 580 EXII w/ "black foamie" thing on camera. Other than RAW conversion there was no post processing done on the images. This was in Heather's living room which had a fairly large window to the camera left.

1. Flash was bounced/thrown behind and to the left
2. Flash was bounced/thrown straight up
3. Flash was bounced/thrown subtly behind and to the right

4. On camera flash bounced/thrown behind and subtly left with a 430 EXII as slave held behind Kat (I chose this photo because you can see Heather through Kat's arm to give an idea of what we were playing around with.