Until recently, almost all photos that I took only used available light. Then I found David Hobby’s excellent Strobist blog, as well as his 8-hour video course on lighting. Hobby’s work made it apparent that by only shooting in ambient light, I was missing out on a whole other aspect of photography. After some fits and starts with that material, I went to a 1-day studio lighting workshop at CEPA Gallery in Buffalo. After the CEPA class I’ve done some more sessions in my studio.
Here are some of my early efforts with artificial lighting.
A floating head (CEPA lighting workshop).
I took this picture at the CEPA lighting workshop. We were learning low key lighting and my classmate was wearing a black shirt, so I wanted to try for a “disembodied head floating in space” look. I added a green gel as an accent hair light.
I haven’t processed this picture at all except to resize it for the blog.
Not long after that class, I did a shoot with Debi in some of her crazy outfits. I wanted to see if I could get a cool picture of her and accent it with a pink shadow using a gelled background light.
Future lighting studies will likely be posted to my collection of “B-sides” on my Flickr account. You’re always welcome to contact me if you would like to work together or have questions.