Lighting the WMBW Photos

The WBMW Radio morning show personalities in a more conventional pose.

Fuji X-H1, Fujinon XC 50-230mm f4.8-6.3 OIS lens

 

Lighting for photography can be as simple or as complex as you want to make it. In general, the harder I work on a lighting setup, the more simple and natural the photographs look. Sometimes, though, complexity doesn't make a lot of difference. 

In 1972, early in my first (and only) studio job, I went along on a location shoot for a fast-food restaurant chain. My company assigned a two-man team to the job and sent me with them to observe and learn.

Our lighting in those antiquarian days consisted of  1000-watt daylight blue  floodlight bulbs in 18-inch reflectors. No flash. I was salivating with anticipation, because this was finally my chance to learn all about lighting ratios and exotic stuff like that.

We set up the lights at the work area and the photographer moved them around a bit. He turned to the director and said, “That look okay to you?” The director said, “Looks good to me. Shoot it.”

And thereby I learned the most valuable lesson I’ve ever learned about photography: photography is all about how things look. If it looks good, it is good. Shoot it 

I've come a long way in the intervening 49 years, but that lesson has stuck with me. And although I've created some very complicated lighting setups when the situation called for it, sometimes a simple solution works just as well.

In previous years I've been able to make the  WMBW staff photos in large spaces -- a gym, on one occasion, and a warehouse another time. But this year, because of the dread virus, the station manager asked me if I could shoot in a room at the radio studio.

In a larger space, I would normally set up a nine-foot roll of seamless paper on background stands. A flash in a 24-inch softbox would be placed on each side of the background and turned to light the background without any light spilling on the subject(s) of the photograph. The main light would be a flash in a 30x40-inch softbox, placed fairly high and positioned at a 30-to-35 degree angle to the subject(s). I might also use a weaker fill light in another softbox at camera position or sometimes, a reflector opposite the main light and close to the subject(s). 

This time, though, I had to make do with a room that was long enough, but only about ten feet wide -- just wide enough to take my roll of seamless and background stands. Definitely not wide enough for a softbox on each side to light the background.

The room at the studio was narrow, but long. By using a longer focal length,

I was able to get the entire station staff on my nine-foot background.

Fuji X-H1, Fujinon XC 50-230mm f4.8-6.3 OIS lens

 

 To make it register as white, the lighting on the background needs to be about one stop brighter than the light on the subject(s). Since I couldn't do this in my usual way, I placed a softbox on the floor behind the subject(s) and angled it up to cover the background. 

The only good thing about the narrow room was that the walls were close enough to serve as reflectors, so I was able to shoot with a main light and no fill. I no longer have a 30x40 softbox, so I used a 24x24 instead. Some photographers get off on using the largest light source possible, even adding layers of diffusion, but look at the photo at the top of this post and this one, which was made with a large softbox and a fill light. Can you see any significant difference in the shading and modeling of the faces? I can't. 

Blog Note: I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings at alifeinphotography.blogspot.com. I'm trying to build up my readership, so if you're reading this on Facebook and like what I write, would you please consider sharing my posts? 

(Photographs copyright David B. Jenkins 2020)

Soli Gloria Deo

To the glory of God alone