Atlanta Photographer Matthew Lane-

Lighting On Two Planes

As I subscribe to the Strobist site, I often find myself recreating some of the featured exercises. Lighting on two planes was the subject of this post.

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2008/02/one-minute-lighting-tip-lighting-on-two.html

David(Strobist) highlighted a shot by user Nyonin that lit some Turkish delight sitting on a green surface. The question was how did the shooter shoot the surface green without getting green on the subject. It was such a simple setup that expresses such an important lighting concept. The first plane is the soft light to illuminate the subject. The second plane was a strobe aimed at the background with a green gel. The key is the camera angle. With the camera at the angle in which this shot was taken, the green wall is perfectly reflected onto the surface. This is my setup shot in attempt to recreate the Turkish delight shot.









I places the figure on the reflective plexy-glass and lit it with the large diffused light of a shoot thru umbrella. This was filed with a silver reflector camera right. The green surface was created by lighting the blank wall with a green gel'd strobe. The blank green wall reflect off the surface of the plexy-glass to crate the desired affect. Here is the final shot.




Cool huh?
ML

Atlanta Photographer Matthew Lane-

Assignment Time

Last month I had an opportunity to shoot Debi Blair, the wife of a friend of mine, for her hair stylist business. They are updating her website and needed some good portraits of her in the salon. We met at the salon on a quiet Sunday morning. The salon was setup in the usual shopping center fashion (...although much hipper) that provided a great "garage" light. I was prepared for using strobes but the light was so perfect that they were not needed at all. More on that later. So we put Abbie in the chair as a client model and did some working shots that came out really well. We then put Bill, her husband in the chair in attempt to attract the male clientèle also. Even though Abbie appeals to men much more than Bill does. After the chair sessions' we did some more environmental portraits of Debi in the salon. I was really happy with the shoot. I was quick, even though we all chatted quite a bit, and the client was very pleased. And I got paid which is always great.



See her site for more shots at www.debiblair.com ***Under Construction at the moment.***

To light or not to light? This was the first time I had been confronted with that question. Over the last year I had really become adept that lighting objects well thanks to David Hobbie and his Strobist blog. For this shoot, the ambient light was so good that artificial light was not a necessity. Strobes could be used with great success but it was not needed. For a split second, didn't know what to do. In the crunch of having to make decision during the shoot, I decided to do the simplest thing and shoot the ambient light. After some meditation on this, I decided that this was the best thing to do and I will use this philosophy on future shoots. (..unless for a Strobist assignment of course) Here's why. If the ambient is already great, there is no reason to not work with it. Using strobes takes time. Setup and exposure all have to be just right for the great shot. If he ambient is great, the work has been done for you already. So shoot it! used to consider my self a Strobist but after this shot I know that will always be more than that. Strobes are a tool. If they are needed they will be used. If they are not needed, they will stay in the case.

For now,
ML

Stritcly Business

Atlanta Photographer Matthew Lane-

Abbie and I attended a wonderful conference last weekend concerning the business of photography called Sticky Business 2. It was held by industry trade organization the American Society of Media Photographers or ASMP. We couldn't have been more pleased and surprised at the insight that this conference was able to dish out. As we start this business adventure, so many questions arise concerning the best way to go about things or what we need to do a all. I feel like after this weekend that there is a clear path for us to follow. Clear enough that once we are finished with our huge list of to do's generated by our conference notes, the focus can really be on creating dynamic images. Everything from copyright and marketing to search engine optimization and even paperwork.
I heard about the conference from Chase Jarvis' blog which I do my best to keep up with. Now that subscribe to blogs via RSS, I've been able to keep track of all I need to be reading. This should allow for more of keeping up with writing my own blog. Which was of course stressed in the ASMP conference. So a special thanks all the contributors and the attending folks I had the pleasure of talking to at ASMP. Cheers!

For more information concerning ASMP see www.asmp.org
Chase Jarvis' gracious blog of insight is at www.chasejarvis.com/blog/

Oh and yes I am a member of ASMP now.