Ok, so you took a deep breath jumped into 2018 and you read through my crazy blog post about life and the pursuit...now it's time to talk about photography! More specifically it's time to talk about motivated light. Let's start with a definition and then I will dive into it -
Motivated Light: A lighting style in which the light sources imitate existing sources, such as lamps or windows (source www.prezi.com)
I wanted to start the year with this because I have had a fair amount of questions about why I light certain things the way I do, and this is the answer to a lot of it. I also have a slightly different definition to motivated light that I want to add, and that's light with purpose. You guys might have heard me refer to this as cinematic lighting, they are the same in my mind. So let's dive into it a little bit deeper and see how you can start to utilize motivated light in your images.
One of the most important things to know about motivated light is that you need to THINK about it. This lighting has nothing to do with how awesome it would be to use 12 lights to take a portrait, it is designed to be ninja lighting...emphasis on DESIGN. You want the viewer to look at the image and have no idea that you used lights at all, it shouldn't even be a thought. If it's a person sitting in a room by a desk lamp your viewer should be saying "I can't believe he/she lit this whole portrait with a desk lamp!". This is where things like flags, grids, scrims and a lot of other tools come into play. Don't put light where it shouldn't be just because it looks cool. Build your scene one light at a time and make sure you have complete control over each one, making sure there is no spill or bleed unless you want it that way.
You will need to be a student of light, in real life. Sun, shade, lamps, bathrooms...what do they look like? Can you make a picture look like that? One of the huge benefits of using motivated light is that you can re-create beautiful lighting in a studio environment. Just think, the more you practice at re-creating natural light the more control you have, the more you can serve your clients. You need a portrait that looks like they are sitting by a window on a sunny day? No problem! You need a moody shot of a dude sitting with a glass of whiskey in a dark lamp lit room? I'll have that in a jiffy Mr Client! If you're saying to yourself "Actually Aaron, I have no idea how to light like that...can you tell me?" my answer is a polite no. What you need to do to become an expert at motivated light is practice. Practice until no one has any idea what the heck you're doing or how the scene is lit. Practice until you need to draw diagrams of the lights because you can't even tell! This type of lighting is very deceptive because it looks so simple. It is not.
Ok, so you can re-create light, that's awesome. Now can you compliment light? Motivated light is more than just being able to make the scene completely with artificial light, it's also using available light mixed with your lights to create one seamless look. If there's a lamp in the room it better look like it's on. There are a lot of factors that go into balancing lights, but a lot of it has to do with the basics of how lights work. Knowing which controls on your camera control which kinds of light is very important, and it has become even more complex now that Hi-speed sync has entered the playing field. However, if you are using regular strobes without hi-speed sync you can use this as a starting point: Use your F-Stop to control strobes and your shutter speed to control ambient light. The reason for this is strobes fire at a certain speed, usually quite fast, so changing the shutter speed is going to have very little effect on them. The tricky part here is that if you're shutter speed gets slow enough the ambient light will start to change the exposure on your subject, so make sure you check exposures with no strobes. You can also use your ISO, but I tend to try and keep my ISO as low as possible, so this is my last resort. ISO will effect ambient and strobe, so make sure you watch that if you decide to change it.
My final thought is to become a composite photographer! I love composite photography and I think it really helps when creating mixed lighting scenes. You can shoot exactly the right exposure for every piece of the puzzle and then splice them together in Photoshop. Composite photography is simply combining more than one image to create a final product, it doesn't have to be these crazy conceptual pieces, it could simply be a better reflection in someones glasses or a long exposure for lighting in a dark room.
With that we launch into the new year! We currently have 3 shoots in the works and 3 Tutuorials getting ready to be shot, so stay tuned as we grab 2018 by the horns! This is your year, get out there and be awesome!