I first picked up a DSLR (or indeed any SLR) in 2005 when I bought my Nikon D70, and for the next 3 years flash lighting scared me witless. In a medium where light is everything, being unwilling and unable to get a grip on how to light with flash was sort of an embarrassment, to me at least, and so I embraced a style of photography that studiously avoided staged lighting – which I cunningly branded ‘urban observational photography’. So, er, basically cool stuff I spotted on the street, like this revolving billboard on the left.
And that’s fine, because I do genuinely love spotting little details in day to day life and photographing them and giving them whatever treatment I think they deserve in Photoshop, but still the spectre of lighting hung over me. I’d get asked to do portraits and have to try and wriggle out of it. Similarly I tried to avoid doing weddings because although I love reportage style shooting, those portraits are what a wedding photoshoot hangs on.
Not good! Keep reading to see how it all worked out in the end…
Strobist to the rescue! I’d heard from a few friends that this guy was giving out free and fantastic advice about how to light with flashes. I figured if amateur enthusiasts were embracing it then I needed to pull my socks up and get stuck in. I read his Lighting 101, the basic principles, but struggled to get it, stuck my head in the ground and carried on as before. Hey, I was still making nice photos that really spoke to me, right?
Correct, but still – light! The essence of photography! I still couldn’t do it. I was still avoiding portraits. Eventually something had to give and so back I went to Lighting 101 many months later, this time armed with a Nikon SB-600 flash (believe it or not I’d not actually had a flash the first time I read it – if I had, and I’d tried the lessons instead of just reading them, I’d have got it much quicker!). And the understanding came quick and hard (no innuendos please, we’re British) and it was extremely satisfying, opening up whole new creative and professional opportunities as this shot of actress Axelle Carolyn demonstrates, shot with a single flash and some daylight. Very pleasing.
The problem, of course, was that I now had another avenue of expenditure tempting me. As well as new lenses and bodies I found my eye wandering over umbrellas, stands, additional flashes, triggers, softboxes… It was inevitable, really, and try as I might I wasn’t able to fight it. First to join the kit list was a dual-purpose umbrella (reflective and shoot-through) and stand, which allowed me to start shooting altogether more dramatic and flexible portraits, such as this portrait for wonderfully friendly employee rewards company, Thomsons Online Benefits, now a regular client. In this shot the flash fired through a shoot-through umbrella from camera right.
But of course it didn’t end there. The first flash was just the stepping-stone drug. Next up was a second strobe, this time a Nikon SB-800 featuring the sync port that the SB-600 frustratingly lacks, for when I finally get my hands on some Pocket Wizards! It was this second light source that allowed me to pull off the promotional portrait of Tony Robinson and Becky McCall for Channel 4’s ‘Tony Robinson and the Blitz Witch’, lit front right by a shoot-through umbrella and the second flash behind them with a home-made snoot and a green gel, both triggered using Nikon’s CLS wireless system.
And with that I considered my strobist kit pretty much complete. Portrait shoots have so far never called for anything extra and I like to travel light and let creativity take the place of an abundance of equipment. I’ve even resisted the frankly overwhelming urge to ditch Nikon CLS and pick up some Pocket Wizards, and that’s saying something. So far, so economical – until this week when I splurged the obscene sum of a whole FORTY QUID on a Lumiquest Softbox III via eBay. Of course, I jest – £40 may seem a lot for what some would probably call a glorified piece of diffuser, but after today I’m convinced it’s well worth it.
And I’ll save the reason why for my next post! To be continued…
