The old Hollywood masters such as George Hurrell, CS Bull and Laszlo Willinger had a dramatic way of lighting their portraits, with specific use of light and shade.
For my review of the Litepanels Sola 4 LED Fresnel Lights, I had Ulorin Vex as model. Her style and clothing are quite unique, and dramatic enough that these lights enhanced her look. I loved what we came up with.
In using these Litepanels Sola 4 LED Fresnel Lights (B&H / Amazon) to specifically emulate Hollywood Glamor lighting, I called in another model, Read more inside...
The dramatic look that video lights lend to photographs, is a regularly explored topic on Tangents. I also cover the use of video light in my book Direction and Quality of Light.
The video lights that I have been favoring, are the Lowel ID-Light (affiliate), but like other halogen video lights, it tends to run hot. LED video lights, such as the Litepanels Croma LED video light (affiliate), also tend to be under-powered for some uses. And since video lights tend to be small light sources, their light is quite contrasty. Read more inside...
What sets Litepanels Croma LED video light (B&H / Amazon) apart from most, is that you can vary the color temperature. You can vary the WB between 3200K and 5600K by dialing a knob. No more need for a gel to be clipped in and out. The gel (or lack of gel) would mean a specific WB with the LitePanels Pro. With the variable adjustment of the Litepanels Croma, you have every color balance setting inbetween. Read more inside...
Exposure metering when using video light for photography
In response to the article on how to shoot romantic wedding portraits, using video light, someone asked about exposure metering with the video light.
"Much in the same vein as using flash, do you establish the ambient exposure first (to your taste) and then add the video light to expose ‘correctly’ for your subject? How do you meter for this video light and therefore adjust the light power to the right level? By chimping on test shots?"
While this would certainly be a correct way of doing it, the practical way of doing it, Read more inside...
With the recent lighting workshop in New York, we again played with the use of video light ... and then took it out to the street. The blue-ish tones of the shady side of the building here, contrasted beautifully with the warm glow of the video light.
As with the article, gelling your flash to get a blue background, this is something that can work very well when we use light sources with different color balance, thereby attaining those complementary colors. The rapid fall-off in light also helped give the photograph a dramatic Read more inside...
Using video lights for outdoor night-time portrait photography
The image at the top was taken on the streets in Baltimore during the same time. Again, I controlled the power to match the video light's brightness better with the background.
camera settings: 1/100 @ f3.5 @ 1600 ISO
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Photography composition - Finding the other angles
At the same photo shoot-out that the stunning Film Noir Fight Scene came out of, I again worked with a model, Jill. Her hairstyle and dress were strongly reminiscent of the flapper era. It therefore just suited a more dramatic and sexy pose and styling. And of course, dramatic lighting. For off-the-cuff / on-the-fly dramatic lighting, a video light is hard to beat.
The photo at the top is the angle that my friend Peter Salo found, while I was standing on a short ledge, shooting from above. The irony here is that the first time Read more inside...
wedding photography: bride & groom portraits with video light
For that dramatic Hollywood look, a video light is probably the easiest light to use, especially when there is the need to work fast like on a wedding day. With Alli & Scott's engagement photo session, I knew I'd be working with a couple that would easily go along with any ideas that we'd come up with. We worked indoors at the Temple Israel in Long Island, New York, and there were all kinds of interesting nooks to explore. Read more inside...
Wedding photography - Style, technique & choice of gear
With Manhattan as a back-drop, I wanted a cinematic look for the photograph of Nima and Peter. A magnificent view behind them as they snuggle in. While I approach wedding photography with my eye on telling the story of the day, for me, where a photographer really reveals a specific style, is in the portraits of the bride and groom.
I wanted a romantic look to this sequence of images, so there were specific choices to be made in terms of equipment, camera settings and the lighting. So let's run through the Read more inside...
By now it should be clear that I'm quite a fan of video lights for the romantic portrait session with a couple. The Incandescent WB of the video light usually matches the existing light fairly well. Because video light has a rapid fall-off in light intensity to the edges of the beam, it doesn't "flatten" out the light like bounce flash would. In addition, the video light can seem quite natural in context of the existing light, and not even look like additional lighting. Somehow the light just appears to be great right there.
Here are two Read more inside...
