I often get asked about making studio style shots and whether it can be done
with much less equipment. The answer is yes, but can you make
credible studio looking images with no studio lighting equipment at
all? The answer is still yes and I'm going to show you.
Some years ago photographers with no brains or severe gear envy
accused me of only being able to take credible pictures
because of having a large studio and lots of equipment.
To prove them wrong I created a credible wine image using nothing more than
three Ikea desk lamps and some home-made diffusers.
More recently on Karl Taylor Education, I set our members another challenge of
working to a brief and creating images based on a very
specific brief that I set them. That included exactly the
composition, the look and feel of the image, the type
of lighting and mood. Our members relished the
challenge and came back with some excellent images
that perfectly match the brief. But some of our members came back and said -
What if I don't have any studio lighting? After all, the shot I presented them to
match, I shot with 3 or 4 studio lights.
So I thought, this is interesting... How far can we take our knowledge and
understanding of the physics of light and use that to overcome the challenges
of not even having any studio lights? So I
decided I would try to match the brief myself
without any lighting at all, other than natural light.
Here's the original shot with the studio
lighting and here is the raw file of what I came
up with only using natural light, and here's what
it looked like with a bit of retouching. Let's see how it was done. Here is our
natural light version of this wine bottle shot.
Wooden base surface, wine bottle sat near a window. Now to make this work,
like that softbox, I've got to diffuse this light, I had a
diffuser in front there for my test shot but i need to diffuse it more because
these window frames are showing up a little bit so I'm going to add another
layer of diffusion. So I'm going to add a double diffusion on this.
Right so that should create that, well it will create that extra
diffusion to hide, if you like, the window frame and
that gives me a softbox more in line with the size that I
need, so remember this whole shot is just
natural light only and I need to make it look as much
like it was lit with studio lighting softboxes.
Right, now we have to turn any other lights off
that we've got in the scene because we only want natural light.
Checking through camera, looks pretty good.
Capture on a one-second exposure and there we go, a beautiful diffused
light on the bottle and that lovely line of
reflection down the right-hand side of the bottle
which was created by this single white piece of
foam board which was acting as another soft box
but it's basically just a reflector in this case. Now the only things I can fine
tune to make this a little bit better is to modify and see if I can improve
the light on the background which i'm going to do next.
Right so it's working with the iPhone torches to create my background glow,
we obviously have to hide them behind the bottle
and the light was a little bit too high in the air so I'm just turning the
torches upside down to see if i can get these
two torch lights from these two iPhones. I'm going to trigger the photo now,
just gonna quick check that the torches are
still hidden behind the bottle, 4 seconds exposure at f22 at the moment
and hopefully, yes there we go, that's exactly what we
wanted. Got a nice little glow behind the bottle
and we've managed to take a studio looking shot
with nothing but natural light and a couple of iPhones.
So as you can see when you apply the knowledge of lighting
you can achieve similar results without even using the equipment
because you've taken that important step forward in learning how
light works, learning the important properties of hard light,
soft light, reflectivity, fall off, inverse square law,
refraction, dispersion, color, shadow density,
and things like global illumination. You also learn
how to see light in a new way that means you
can counter any problem with lighting that you encounter.
But, can you work to a brief, can you manage a client's
expectations or simply deliver a picture for yourself
that matches what was in your mind's eye? This is very important and one that I
now regularly challenge my members with.
The reason it's important is because if you work to a brief,
or your own pre-visualized ideas, it teaches you not to give up, and it
teaches you to solve problems that you might otherwise have
decided to compromise on. Working in this way teaches you to
create better images. Here are some of the examples where
people did and didn't match the brief that I set
them. On the brief there was no request for a border
whatsoever, lighting feeling on the labels not too bad,
but it does look like some obvious post-production, the bottle doesn't
really feel grounded. It's not shot from the right angle, look
where the horizon is, look at the angle of the bottle,
it's not on brief I'm afraid. What, what do I say? Comes nowhere near the
brief. This stripe of light down the right-hand side
side is not again what was asked for.
If you had actually tried to execute the stripe that I had on the
right-hand side you would have forced yourself to solve
that problem of making it happen and in solving that problem of making it
happen, you would have learned something and you would have benefited your own
photography. Now, don't get me wrong, some of these are
good shots, I'm not saying they're not good photos,
but that isn't the point here. Perfectly on brief
with the exception that the bottle, to me, looks like it's slightly off
axis, it just needs to turn a little bit. That shot is bang on
with the lighting style, the homogenous light on the right,
the light up the right side neck of the bottle,
down the left side of the bottle, the level of diffusion,
the exposure level of the label compared to the reflections on the bottle,
the exposure on the background, the base surface.
If I was the art director, they would have said good job Michael,
that's exactly on point including the perspective on the bottle
as well. This one is right on point as well,
lighting on the bottle, the reflection levels off the glass,
up the neck of the bottle, the label exposure,
the background exposure, the base exposure, the believability that it
actually looks like a real photo is all there, but the only slight
difference i think between that and Michael's shot
is look at Michael's shot in terms of the... watch the difference, this is
Saurabh and then Michael's, Saurabh and Michael's. What you have with
Michael's is that slight edge of prestige just because we are
seeing, looking up at the bottle, just a tiny bit. Not so much that it's aloof
and snobby but here we're not looking up at it
quite as much, it's a little bit flatter in this shot but everything else is
executed really well in this shot but in Michael Nadler's shot, it is the
closest to being absolutely on brief as required. So you can see how
beneficial these exercises are in improving your skills
as a photographer. You can also appreciate how really
getting to grips with lighting, even if you don't have any, can also make
you a much better photographer. If you'd like to acquire these skills
and take part in our next photography brief
challenge, join me over on karltayloreducation.com.
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